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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23353984">The Turn Up</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_alchemy/pseuds/what_alchemy'>what_alchemy</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Terror (TV 2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anal Sex, Barebacking, Bisexuality, Chastity Device, Come untouched, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dirty Talk, Don't Try This At Home, Face-Sitting, Familial Rejection, Felching, Fetlife, Fisting, Internet Hookup, Lingerie, Nonbinary Character, Object Insertion, Other, Other kinks mentioned, Praise Kink, Pregnancy Kink, Rimming, Rough Sex, Semi-Public Sex, Sex Toys, Size Kink, Spanking, unsafe sexual practices</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 10:14:04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>30,513</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23353984</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_alchemy/pseuds/what_alchemy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When Francis Crozier, head of operations at Expeditions Unlimited, makes a connection on Fetlife, he doesn't expect it to be his infuriating coworker, James Fitzjames. </p><p> </p><p>A kinky sex romp held tenuously together by the thinnest of plots.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>155</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>172</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Please do heed the tags. No pearl clutching allowed.</p><p> </p><p>As ever, none of this would be possible without Jouissant, the finest brain twin.</p><p> </p><p>AO3 seems to have done a number on my HTML and also made it impossible to fix, so it will simply remain weird. I apologize for any confusion that might cause.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    
    <br/>
    
    <br/>
    
    <br/>
  </p>
</div><p>James was yammering on about the Graven-Yang deal again. Francis sighed and pushed the salad around his plate. His kingdom for an end to all working lunches.</p>
<p>“And then the old bugger challenged me to a duel with a <i>boot</i> dagger! Can you imagine? I swear, the man was born in 1850.” </p>
<p>Laughs all around. Francis glanced up to see Ned grinning at James like a buffoon, Mr. Franklin chewing serenely at the head of the table like some sort of indulgent uncle. Did no one else get bloody <i>tired</i> of listening to the same rota of five stories from this gasbag? Each one featuring a James Fitzjames more charismatic, more humorous, more dashing than any other <i>risk assessment analyst</i> in the history of man. Francis had never met such a James. He had never even been on one of Expeditions Unlimited’s voyages. Christ, but sometimes Francis wanted nothing more than to knock him down a peg or three. Possibly with Francis’s prick in his prissy little arse.</p>
<p>“Tell us about Birdshit Island, why don’t you James?”</p>
<p>James’s attentions landed on him, mirth dissolving like a veil before his devastation.</p>
<p><i>A palpable hit,</i> Francis thought smugly. </p>
<p>The meeting concluded and Francis returned to his office. He managed to contain the roll of his eyes until he was safely ensconced by himself. </p>
<p>Any prolonged contact with James got Francis all het up. He wanted to take his laptop out and open it to the last page he’d been poring over the night before: a profile on Fetlife. Usually a futile endeavor, even if it occasionally resulted in a tolerable one-nighter, but last night he’d come across someone very promising indeed. Pun absolutely intended. Francis wanted to get back to it, wanted the easy, sexy conversation, wanted to lose himself in another person and obliterate all thoughts of James Fitzjames.</p>
<p>He couldn’t think on it though. Work was work, and Francis didn’t want his cock involved at all. </p>
<p>When he opened his email, he had several from Mr. Franklin about the same things discussed in the meeting, a meme from Silna, which he chuckled at and sent to J.C., a few expense reports for review, a note from accounting asking him about a discrepancy, and Tom Blanky’s ice report from the Arctic, no doubt peppered with his color commentary. Francis opened it and settled into his office chair as if the email were some great comforting novel. He wished he had some tea.</p>
<p>The Arctic, it seemed, had some ice.</p>
<p>Francis was composing his reply to John Hartnell in accounting when there came a knock at his office door. The walls being glass, he looked up and saw James Fitzjames standing in the hall with a file in hand. All of this would be much easier if he didn’t look so damnably delectable in those office clothes. At what point was someone merely showing off? Francis scowled, definitely at James and not at himself. James made a stupid face and waved the file in greeting when he saw Francis looking at him. Francis sighed and gestured for him to come in.</p>
<p>“How can I help you, James?” he said.</p>
<p>“I’m running the projections for next year.”</p>
<p>“Obviously.”</p>
<p>“You got Blanky’s ice report?”</p>
<p>“James, you know I did.”</p>
<p>James leveled him a flat-mouthed look of consternation.</p>
<p>“Work with me here, Francis,” he said.</p>
<p>“Get to your point and I will!”</p>
<p>“The 2016 Greenland-Iceland-Faroe Islands voyage,” he said. “You took the magnetic readings?”</p>
<p>“James!” Francis said, impatient. “You know I bloody well did!”</p>
<p>James opened the file and laid it on his desk. He had big hands with long, uncalloused fingers, and one of them jabbed at a cluster of bullet points in the center of the page.</p>
<p>“Can you double check this?” he said. “It seems off to me.”</p>
<p>Francis tamped down on another sigh and peered at the readings. The numbers did seem…wonky. He pushed the file to the side and swiveled in his chair to face his computer. He pulled up his file on the voyage in question, including the personal notes that didn’t make it into the official account. </p>
<p>As he tapped away at his computer, James folded himself into a seated position on the edge of his desk instead of sitting in a chair like a normal fucking human being. His shoulders were straight and broad, and the modest musculature of his arms strained the fabric of his crisp dress shirt when he crossed his arms over his chest. The firm length of his thigh likewise filled out his trousers. Everything was bloody <i>slim-cut</i> lately and it drove Francis mad. </p>
<p>The digital copy of the file contained the same errors, and Francis grunted his frustration. James leaned over and looked at his monitor. Francis could smell his shampoo—lilac or thistle or some such froofy thing. He ground his teeth together.</p>
<p>“I’ll have to check my journal,” he said.</p>
<p>James craned himself around to fix Francis with a questioning look.</p>
<p>“Hand-written?” he said. “I don’t suppose you have it here.”</p>
<p>“It’s just in my book case,” Francis said, jerking his head toward the case in question. “Hold on.”</p>
<p>He stood and walked over to it, highly aware of James trailing a little too closely behind him. Gooseflesh rose up on the back of his neck. He shot James a scowl. James half smiled and held his hands up, hanging back.</p>
<p>Francis turned to his book shelves. The top shelf had all his favorite navigation texts and an atlas or three. The rest contained all his voyage journals from the past thirteen years—his entire tenure with Expeditions Unlimited. He found the journal in question and began flipping through.</p>
<p>Christ, his handwriting. He’d been drunk nearly all the time. It was a miracle he hadn’t driven the ship into an iceberg. He shook his head and reminded himself to thank Ned again, and Tom and Silna and Harry, too, for getting them all out alive. For getting him through it when the time came.</p>
<p>“Here,” he said gruffly, thrusting the open journal at James. “Those sevens are ones, and the nines sevens.”</p>
<p>James’s fingers brushed his when he took the journal from him. Francis’s very stupid prick twitched. He took a step back and faced out his window, twisting his hands behind his back. London, congested with building and cars. He could practically feel the smog. Had he once wanted to be here so badly that he left his lush green home, barely to return once a decade?</p>
<p>He glanced at James out of the corner of his eye, the way he chewed his lip, the strong masculine lines of him. Heat gathered in Francis’s belly and he tore his gaze away, annoyed.</p>
<p>Yes. Yes, he’d had to leave Banbridge. </p>
<p>“Thank you, Francis,” James said after a while. “This helps immensely. Jesus, why no one caught this before...”</p>
<p>“The fault is mine,” Francis said, short. “My handwriting is not even legible to me, it turns out.”</p>
<p>James smiled and held the journal up.</p>
<p>“Can I borrow this? I promise I’ll only look at the data and not at any deep personal thoughts.”</p>
<p>Francis snorted.</p>
<p>“As if you could read any of them anyway.”</p>
<p>“Ta, Francis,” James said. “I’ll get it back to you straight away.”</p>
<p>Francis waved him away, and James left his office with blessed alacrity. Francis stood at the window for a long time after.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Back at home, Francis dropped trou as soon as he was through the door. He kicked his trousers and his socks into the hamper, and his button-down followed. He ordered Vietnamese delivery, pulled out his laptop, and sank onto the couch. </p>
<p>Hastily he opened up his computer. It was still open to Fetlife, and the person with whom he’d been corresponding. The profile picture featured an arse held open for his perusal with elegant hands on each cheek, full bollocks tantalizingly rounded and be-furred, and a soft prick leaking from a metal chastity device. The hole at the heart of the photo was a tiny wink, framed by a smattering of dark hair. Francis’s heart flopped about like a choking fish and he felt his face flame.</p>
<p>
  <i>Christ, you’re forty-nine years old,<i> he thought. <i>Get a bloody grip.</i></i></i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>The profile belonged to someone named AmorPhous. Francis’s handle was FrankieSaysHoldStill, but no one seemed to get the reference. Most of the people on the site were younger than he, and thought he was simply declaring his Dom sensibilities, which were likely disappointing in someone looking for that sort of thing. Francis—he simply wanted to savor. To push his way inside. To hold another body in his power and limn any pain with tenderness. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>The conversation started last night, when AmorPhous sent him a message that said only “RELAX!” with three crying-laughing emojis. Francis was surprised to find a laugh clapping out of him when he read it. AmorPhous was listed as GQ/NB in his 30s with he/him/his pronouns. There were several photos of objects of various size and origin entering him, only one of his penis free of its cage and looking utterly delectable, and none of his face. While Francis had become preoccupied with the others and even wanked to a staggering completion to them last night, he was disappointed that he couldn’t put a face to it all. He could not, however, fault AmorPhous—he had been too nervy to put his own fearsome mien on this site, as well. You never knew who could be lurking.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Ha!” he had responded. “Aren’t you a little young for all that?”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“No one’s too young to have such bad taste, darling,” AmorPhous had said, and Francis laughed again. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“I like that hairbrush in your pretty arse,” he wrote.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Why thank you.” Blushing emoji. “Trying to make room for a monster cock like yours.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis had hardened instantly.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>AmorPhous listed his interests as bottoming, cumming while being fucked (Francis had gotten the involuntary twitch of his eye upon seeing that spelling under control since joining the site—an act of desperate self-preservation), cumming untouched, chastity play, cockwarming, size queen, rimming, anal, anal play, anal fingering, object insertion, big dicks, prostate milking, spanking, fisting, hair pulling, toys, double penetration, group sex, natural body hair, pregnancy play. He did not list BDSM, domination or submission, or rope bondage, which was curious on this site but simpatico with Francis’s own preferences. He had a few things listed under Hard No: choking, diapers, age play, humiliation, bloodplay, scat, tickling. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis’s profile, he knew, left something to be desired. He listed only a few details—Sober bi male, 45, dad bod—and a handful of interests. Anal, anal play, topping, tit sucking, oral—giving, oral—receiving, dirty talk. There had been too many to choose from and he was overwhelmed when he first joined. Better to keep it simple, he thought.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>For his photos he had only three, all of his hard prick with its glistening slit. In one of the photos, he held a Fanta can alongside his cock—he was just as thick and nearly twice as long. He got a lot of attention for that one.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>He and AmorPhous got on like a house on fire all evening. Francis found himself as amused as he was aroused. He wanked to a picture of AmorPhous in a gauzy lace skirt and torn tights, an ornate bed post finial protruding from his arsehole. Francis came when AmorPhous said, “I want you to pump buckets of come into me, make me taste it in the back of my throat.” </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Afterward he had stayed up too late talking with him, and when he signed off to go to bed at last, there was a vast emptiness he was hard-pressed not to feel encroaching.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>By light of day, Francis was embarrassed by his enthusiasm, but now his fingers itched to type out a message. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>
      <strike>Had a great time last night.</strike>
    </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Urgh.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>
      <strike>Thought about you and your delicious arse all day, especially when I had to disassociate at an unbearable work lunch.</strike>
    </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Too personal, too complainy.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>
      <strike>I want to eat your arse til you come.</strike>
    </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Was he being too eager?</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>He was saved from the question by a new message from AmorPhous popping up.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Couldn’t stop thinking of what your prick might feel like inside me today. Almost had to have a wank at work.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis’s heart went racing again.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“God, why didn’t you?” he wrote back. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Nothing handy seemed to stack up.” Sad face emoji. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Don’t suppose you have a convenient courgette lying about,” Francis wrote. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Ohhh, naughty. I would have to go to the shops though, and if I’m going to go out…”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis’s cock was making its presence known, twitching out the opening in his smalls. He licked his suddenly dry lips, hands poised over the keyboard. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“I don’t have flatmates,” he wrote finally.  </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Oooh a big prick and a big paycheck,” AmorPhous wrote. “Some boys have all the luck.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“I need to eat and take care of some things. Want to say 9?”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>There was a long silence, and mortification suffused him. He felt it spill hot down his head and neck and spread across his chest as the minutes ticked on.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“No pressure,” Francis wrote. “It’s silly, just a bit of fun. Think nothing of it.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“It’s not,” AmorPhous replied in an instant. “What are we doing if it doesn’t lead to this.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“It doesn’t have to,” Francis wrote. “Fantasy can stay fantasy.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Frankie Frankie Frankie.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>A smile touched Francis’s lips. No one but his sisters ever called him Frankie anymore. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“AmorPhous,” he wrote.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>There was another long pause. Francis bounced his knee and sucked down a bottle of water. He wanted to pace but couldn’t tear himself from the screen. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Finally, a message popped up.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“We can sit alone in our flats rubbing ourselves raw for the next few weeks, building up increasingly fantastical ideas about each other until we’re inevitably disappointed when we do everything right and proper: meet in some well-lit public place, exchange pleasantries and small talk over coffee as if we haven’t already seen each other’s genitals, and then shake hands somberly over signed consent forms before you drive that great big prick into my eagerly PrEPped arse. Or, I can come round to yours at 9, and we can skip the torture.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis gave him the address.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>The knock came at precisely 9pm. Francis ran a hand through his hair and scratched down his beard as he tried to stem the racing of his heart. He shook himself and took a deep breath before opening the door.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>It was James Fitzjames. In a blue pleated skirt with lace trim and a leather motorcycle jacket. Francis’s heart fell into the bowl of his belly as James’s face, a moment ago bright and eager, dissolved into shock and horror.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Fuck,” Francis said.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>James twisted up the fabric of his skirt even as he twisted up his mouth.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Well, this is a turn up,” he said. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Are you fucking kidding me right now?”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“I’ll go.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Fucking right you will.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>James’s face pinched.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Look Francis,” he said, straightening his spine and squaring his shoulders as he looked down that intolerable patrician nose at him. “No one at work knows I’m non-binary and I would <i>appreciate</i> if you would keep it to yourself.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Oh, get over yourself,” Francis snapped. “Who would I bloody tell?”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“I’m sure you and Tom and J.C. could have a good laugh about it.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“You’re saying I would <i>out</i> you for a lark with my mates?” Francis heard his voice go shrill and loud. “Who the <i>fuck</i> do you think you’re talking to?”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Keep your voice down!”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“You come to my flat and insult me to my face!”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Well I hardly knew it was your flat, now did I?”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“You would never have come!”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“You’ve got that right!”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Right, because I’m such a fucking troll,” Francis sneered. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Christ, that’s not—” James threw his hands up. “You’re a joyless <i>arse</i>, is what you are, Francis!”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>They were both of them panting now, scowling at each other in the door jamb. James ground his teeth together and stepped back.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Let’s forget all this,” he said. “And when we see each other at work we’ll each pretend the other is invisible, how does that sound?”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“That would be nice for you, wouldn’t it?” Francis said, dropping his voice to a sibilant whisper. “Then you could forget whose hideous troll cock you’ve been gagging after.” He stepped back into his flat, poised to shut the door. “See you tomorrow, <i>Fitzjames</i>.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis swung the door shut with too much verve. He closed his eyes and pressed his face into the wood. When he looked out the peephole a few moments later, James was gone.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>He avoided his computer for the rest of the night.</i>
  </i>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>No matter what he did the next morning, James seemed to be in the periphery of Francis’s vision. Every time Francis looked up, there he was: standing at someone’s cubicle with a sheaf of paper, making coffee in the break room, walking from his office to Mr. Franklin’s or vice versa in his bloody slim cut shirt and trousers that showed off the long, strong shape of him. Francis scowled and ducked his head to look at his own work every time he caught a glimpse. The words on his reports did not coalesce into meaning no matter how many times he read them.</p><p>After lunch Mr. Franklin called another meeting. “Maximizing guest satisfaction,” as if that weren’t baked into every damn thing they did as a company already. Francis braced himself for the tedium, but when he got to the meeting room, the only chair open was across from James. He stopped short. James’s back was to him, and he did not look up.</p><p>Thomas Jopson, his assistant, brightened and waved when he saw him. The empty chair was beside him, and Francis made his way to it, hoping he didn’t look like a man being marched to the guillotine. </p><p>Mr. Franklin had yet to arrive. In the periphery of his vision, Francis saw James nodding earnestly at whatever Henry Le Vesconte was saying. Francis cast his attention to his pen and paper. He doodled bits of nothing, swirls on the paper. Beside him, Thomas was whispering to Silna about a little-used bathroom in the basement. Well, Thomas was whispering, and Silna answering back in that frank, blunt way she had.</p><p>“I’ve just discovered it,” Thomas said. “Does everyone know about it?”</p><p>“It is too inconvenient,” Silna said. “There are many bathrooms in the office.”</p><p>“Yes, but there’s no one ever in this one. It’s very luxurious.”</p><p>“You are a nervous shitter,” Silna said. “I understand.”</p><p>Francis nearly choked. James looked up at the sound, and their eyes met briefly. Francis’s widened. James’s mouth twitched.</p><p>“That’s—er, I don’t mean…I just like privacy,” Thomas said.</p><p>“No need to be nervous,” she said. “Everyone shits, Thomas.”</p><p>Francis coughed and ducked his head. He pressed his lips together to keep from laughing.</p><p>It was then that Mr. Franklin arrived, and all talk of bathrooms was forgotten. <br/>
 </p><p> </p><p>Francis was still fractious the next day. James was still wandering about the office in and out of Francis’s line of vision like he had not a care in the world. Francis holed himself up in his office and swiveled his chair so his back faced the corridor as much as possible. Then he was annoyed that his desk was situated such that he was always seeing the corridor out of the corner of his eye no matter how much he swiveled. Francis was cross at his computer and yelled at a dried up pen and squinted at the things John Hartnell wanted him to sign.</p><p>J.C. took that as his cue to come bother him. </p><p>“Maybe it’s time to look into glasses, old man,” J.C. said, slapping him on the shoulder. </p><p>“Who you calling old, whippersnapper?” Francis said.  J.C. was a whopping four months younger than he.</p><p>J.C. kicked out a chair on the other side of Francis’s desk and sat down and pinned him with a pensive look. Francis grimaced.</p><p>“What?” he said.</p><p>“You’ve sand in the crack of your arse about something and I’d like to know what,” he said.</p><p>“I’ve no…<i>sand</i>,” Francis groused. He squared away a few haphazard piles of paper while J.C. looked on, amused, the fucker.</p><p>“Your ears turn red every time James Fitzjames enters your vicinity,” he said. </p><p>Francis looked up and scowled. </p><p>“Don’t worry,” J.C. said. “I doubt anyone who hasn’t known you lo these thirty years would notice.”</p><p>“He’s a thorn in my side!” he said. </p><p>“Aye but he cuts a dashing figure, no?”</p><p>“So do plenty of people here,” Francis said. He gestured at J.C. “You, for example, have all the ladies down in accounts aflutter.”</p><p>“You bring Valentine’s sweets to an entire department <i>one time</i>,” J.C. huffed.</p><p>“I’ve told them you’re a happily married man,” Francis said, lips curling up. “To no avail.”</p><p>“Anyway, you sly old dog, I see what you’re doing.” J.C. slapped his thighs and stood up. “Keep your secrets!” he said. “Tell me the moment you come to your senses and I can put in a good word for you.”</p><p>“I don’t need…he hates me.”</p><p>“Oh, Francis.”</p><p>“And I hate him!”</p><p>J.C. hummed and cocked his head. Francis resisted squirming in his seat.</p><p>“He’s a kiss-arse and a braggart and tells the same handful of interminable stories where he’s the conquering hero all the time!”</p><p>“He’s also great fun and a good friend and has wanted your expertise on magnetism for a long time, but you’re too proud to bend a little to get to know him.” J.C. moved to the door and paused. “We can all list bad things about ourselves and each other, Francis. How about the good stuff, eh?” </p><p>He slapped the lintel and left Francis’s office. Through the glass Francis saw James looking at him, only to startle when their eyes met and turn abruptly away.</p><p> </p><p>Francis came home to two emails telling him he had messages on Fetlife. His heart leapt and then fizzled like a deflating balloon when they were from people he hadn’t interacted with yet. The first was a bear who wanted “Daddy” to put him into place, and was Francis the one? Being as the man had half a foot on him and outweighed Francis by about a seven stone, most of it muscle by the looks of him, Francis doubted it. The second was a willowy little blonde girl, not yet twenty, who wanted him to “absolutely destroy her virgin arse.” Francis didn’t even have to read more to dismiss both possibilities. He wrote them both back saying he was flattered but not interested right now. </p><p>The messages from AmorPhous remained. Francis scrolled through them with a growing sense of heaviness. AmorPhous—<i>James</i>—had made him laugh, made him come, made him feel like he could be the kind of man other people desired again. Francis couldn’t decide if he resented James the humiliation of it all, or if he was angry that James had somehow hidden an entire interesting, beautiful person behind the toffy public schoolboy façade.</p><p>He hovered his mouse over the “delete” button. He shut the laptop before he could click, and resolved to make his dinner and clean the dishes and maybe even read a book. </p><p>He lasted two hours before opening his laptop again. He had one message, from nearly an hour ago, from AmorPhous. His heart did silly shit inside him.</p><p><i>Get a fucking grip</i>, he thought, and clicked on the message.</p><p>“So there’s this guy at work,” it said. “Sexy as fuck. Drives me absolutely nutters.”</p><p>Nothing else. Francis got up and paced around. He scrubbed his hands through his hair and looked out the window, then crossed the flat and looked out the other side.</p><p>What was James playing at? Was Francis about to hear about how sexy J.C. was, or Ned Little, or Thomas Jopson? Or was James really talking about Francis? And if so, was he taunting him or looking for a hookup? </p><p>Francis sat back down and flexed his fingers over the keyboard.</p><p>“I know the feeling,” he wrote, and hit send. He knocked back half a glass of water like it was his last shot of whiskey. “What’s yours like?” he sent, and held his breath.</p><p>Another message popped up.</p><p>“Mm, hot. Sexy beard. A little bit fierce, I think—like a lion, not like, you know, Tyra. A bit of a daddy vibe, like he’d scold you but take care of you too. Competent and confident in it. Makes me want to get on my knees and suck that fat cock right in his office. The walls are glass. Everyone would see.”</p><p><i>Shit</i>, Francis thought, and opened his trousers up.</p><p>“I’m sure he’d like that,” Francis replied.</p><p>“What about yours?” </p><p>Francis’s mouth went dry again. He let his cock out. It was soft yet, but filling slowly.</p><p>“Too distracting by half,” he wrote. He licked his lips. “More personable than me, more affable. Everyone likes him and I’m a curmudgeon who has to be contrary, but truth is I want all his attention. Office wear suits him, emphasizes how lean he is, how broad the shoulders. Long lines give way to a lovely full arse. Yes, he looks unfairly good in business cas, but I imagine him in a skirt or a dress. I imagine bending him over my desk and flipping his skirt up and pulling his knickers down so I can eat his arse til he begs for my cock instead.”</p><p>His prick filled a bit more and twitched onto its side. Francis resisted squeezing it.</p><p>“I bet he sits in his office daydreaming of that very thing,” James wrote back. “I bet he has a plug he wears to work, hoping you’ll notice.”</p><p>Francis’s cock hardened to painful capacity. </p><p>“Have you ever,” he wrote.</p><p>“Mmm. Yes. When I know I’m going to be in meetings with him all day.”</p><p><i>Christ</i>. They’d had such a day last Thursday—blocks of meetings back to back and no time in their own offices. Francis had been surly—all of it could have been an email—but Mr. Franklin liked holding people captive and droning on and on about accounts and stores and logistics and weather patterns. Francis had noticed James only in passing across the table, crossing and recrossing his legs as he spoke to Henry Le Vesconte. Fuck, had he really been stuffed up all that time? Was it really for Francis? </p><p>What about the meetings they’d had today? Yesterday?</p><p>Francis gripped the base of his cock. </p><p>“How did it feel,” he typed out with one hand. He pumped idly as he waited for the reply. He wondered if James had something up him even now.</p><p>“It’s best when you’re moving around. Walking or shifting in your seat or what have you. The stretch. The fullness. The way it nudges your prostate. It’s nothing like being fucked, but it certainly gets you ready for it. I like to think he’ll see the outline of it someday when I’m bent over for the copier or leaning on someone’s desk. I like to think he’ll know it’s for him. He’ll come up behind me and tear my trousers off and pull it out of me and then fuck me senseless.”</p><p>“Everyone watching?” Francis wrote. He was jerking steadily now.</p><p>“Of course,” came the answer. “Everyone would finally see.”</p><p>See what, Francis neither knew nor cared.</p><p>“What have you got in you,” he asked.</p><p>“Vibrator. Big, graduated bulbs. Feels fucking amazing.”</p><p>“Want to suck you while you fuck yourself on it,” Francis wrote. He gripped himself hard and jerked faster.</p><p>“Fuck I wish it was you,” James replied. “I wish that monster cock was pounding me into oblivion right now. If you got me just right I could come four, five times just from your cock in my arse. I want to wring that prick dry. Are you wanking?”</p><p>“Yes,” Francis wrote. He typed <i>come over</i> and deleted it three times. </p><p>“Tell me.”</p><p>Francis groaned but left off his cock to type furiously into the message box.</p><p>“Want to stuff that arse of yours with anything I can find,” he wrote. “Marbles and golf balls and screwdriver handles. Want to watch you push them out, want to listen to you moaning as they fall to the ground. Want to find bigger and bigger things and watch you struggle. Want to smack that pretty arse while you do it.”</p><p>“Shit.”</p><p>“When it’s all out I set the head of my prick against your loose little hole. It’s so big it doesn’t look like it’ll fit, but you’ve been a good slut, training up for me.”</p><p>“Christ, Francis.”</p><p>He could hear it now—the way James said his name with that infuriatingly plummy accent. He licked his lips and smacked the keys.</p><p>“I pour a bunch of lube on and ease in just past the first ring and you cry out. I hold still and tell you to bear down against me, and you bloom open to me like a rose. I slide the rest of the way in.”</p><p>Suddenly his phone buzzed. Francis swore and fumbled unlocking it. </p><p>It was a video of James. He was knelt on his bed fucking the toy in and out of himself as it buzzed away. His cock hung untouched between his legs in a metal chastity device. He wore thigh high stockings and bloody <i>garters</i> to hold them up and nothing more. He was panting and moaning. Francis’s prick swelled impossibly further. </p><p>“Gonna come,” he texted. “Wanna see?”</p><p>Francis hit the microphone button.</p><p>“Yes,” he said, and hit send. </p><p>“Say more,” James wrote.</p><p>Francis turned the microphone on again and yanked at his cock in a punishing rhythm. He closed his eyes.</p><p>“I’m in you bare,” he said. “I’m usually so careful, but you’re so lush and ripe and beautiful I can’t help myself need to feel you.” Send. “I need to flood you seed you make you leak me for days.” Send. “I push in deep your arse is stretched so wide and taut around me I pull out again and you sob and beg.” Send. “But don’t worry I’ll fuck right back in hard now and fast do you like it fast James.” Send. “I’ll pound you ’til you’re screaming pound you ’til you’re hoarse James gonna see if you can come like this just being fucked just my cock up you James.” Send. “I’d like to see that James you coming on my cock and nothing else.” Send.</p><p>His phone buzzed. Francis snatched it up again and unlocked it to find a video. He turned the volume up. </p><p>The toy was buzzing and James was rocking back into it. The widest part of the toy—no match for Francis’s prick—passed through the first ring of his arsehole over and over to a symphony of low moans.</p><p>“Francis,” James groaned, and Francis growled, jerking his cock harder.</p><p>James’s body went taut and quivered, the lean play of muscles in his back, his legs, his arse rippling. He shoved the toy in over and over and gave a shout, and then let go of it as he toppled face down into the bedding, hands twisting in the bedsheets as he gasped into his pillow. His arse contracted around the toy, and though his prick wasn’t hard in its metal cage, a flood of come poured out of him. He rocked back and forth and the come kept gushing until finally he pushed the toy out with a grunt. He collapsed on the bed, panting and boneless. The video ended.</p><p>It was, Francis thought, the absolute hottest ninety seconds he’d ever seen. </p><p>“Your turn,” the text said. “I need to see.”<br/>
 <br/>
<i>Fuck,</i> Francis thought. <i>I’m so bloody close.</i></p><p>He forced himself to leave off his cock. He emailed himself both videos and opened them on his computer, then set his phone against the screen. He put it in selfie mode and hit play on the second video, then record on his phone. He took his shirt off and sat back. He held his cock up and yanked the foreskin back before the camera. Around the head, he spread the liquid that beaded up, and then returned to the practiced violence of his wank. He let his head loll on the back of the couch, and when James groaned his name he moaned himself. </p><p>“Fuck, James,” he said. “You’re so bloody sexy, I’m going to combust.”</p><p>He watched the video on a loop, groaning and gasping all the while. When he was about to come, he chanted James’s name, then let out a strangled grunt and shot in thick ropes all over his chest and belly. Some of it hit his jaw. When he was done he let himself sink into a daze on the couch, and his prick flopped sideways onto his open trousers. </p><p>When he came back to himself, he deleted the last forty seconds of him lying insensate on the couch, and sent it to James, but only after quintuple-checking that it wasn’t going to J.C., or his childhood friend Jimmy Coyle, or any other James of his acquaintance.</p><p>Three minutes later, he got a text.</p><p>“You’re so fucking hot, Francis. Wish all that were in me.”</p><p><i>Let me fill you with babies</i>, Francis wrote, and then deleted it.</p><p><i>Come by and we can do it for real</i>. Delete.</p><p><i>Were you wearing those stockings at work</i>. Delete. Delete. Delete.</p><p>“If you aren’t careful, all this will go to my head,” he wrote.</p><p>“It’s already gone to mine,” James replied.<br/>
 </p><p> </p><p>Francis was reading Tom’s Arctic ice reports when he caught sight of Mr. Franklin rounding the corner, James trailing behind him with a pinched brow. He was whispering something and gesturing furiously until Mr. Franklin stopped and turned around. Francis could imagine the infuriating, placating tones. </p><p>James’s eyes darted to Francis and then back to Mr. Franklin. Francis swallowed and sat up straight. Mr. Franklin turned around and made his way toward his office, plastering a polite smile on his face when he saw Francis already looking at him.</p><p>Francis braced himself for whatever this was. Maybe Franklin had found a reason to fire him at last.</p><p>“Ah, Francis,” he said as he entered, all false cheer. Francis tried to control his face. “I’ve been reading James’s risk reports, and I’ve decided to put J.C. at the helm of this year’s Northwest Passage voyage instead of you.”</p><p>Behind Franklin, James was shaking his head. Francis ground his teeth together and kept his eyes trained resolutely on Mr. Franklin.</p><p>“With respect, sir,” Francis said, “James’s reports are on the risks of the voyages themselves, not on who captains them.”</p><p>“Francis, we’ve had this conversation time and time again…”</p><p>“And I never get a satisfactory answer from you, John!”</p><p>Franklin straightened and stuck his chin in the air.</p><p>“Francis, you are head of operations, and as such—”</p><p>“As such, I should be permitted to go on our flagship voyage more than once a decade!”</p><p>Franklin stared at him until he sank back in his chair.</p><p>“My stance is firm, as ever,” Franklin said. “We cannot spare you for a month in the Arctic in addition to your usual rotation of short trips. Must we do this every year, Francis?”</p><p>“This is ridiculous,” Francis said. “I can do the Falklands and South Georgia in April and May, that’s less than twenty days, five of which are weekends and thus not subject to business time anyway, the Antarctic Experience end of May and into June, then thirty-five days in August and September for the Passage, then another pair of two weekers back to back in Iceland and Greenland. That’s much less time than J.C. or Dr. Rae or even bloody Barrow, John.”</p><p>“Francis,” Franklin said. “You go on the shorter trips because you’re needed here. You know that. I hope you can be happy with that going forward.”</p><p>With that, he left Francis’s office, and James stood there with his arms crossed, clutching a report that had nothing to do with Francis’s captaincy whatsoever.</p><p>Francis scowled at him.</p><p>“He’ll never forgive me Sophia,” Francis said. “<i>She</i> dumped <i>me</i>, for God’s sake.”</p><p>“He thinks you’re not over her,” James said. </p><p>“So why not send me away as much as possible?” Francis said. “It makes so bloody sense. He just wants to punish me. And you! He used you like a human shield there, hiding behind your reports. Fucking coward.”</p><p>James’s mouth twisted. Francis’s brain lit.</p><p>“What,” Francis said. “You know something, tell me what it is.”</p><p>James sighed.</p><p>“It’s this, Francis,” he said. </p><p>“It’s <i>what?</i>”</p><p>“Your manner,” he said. “He thinks you’ll alienate customers if they’re trapped on a ship with you for more than two and a half weeks.”</p><p>“I’m—” Francis cut himself off and scowled. James shifted from foot to foot in front of the door, looking miserable. “I don’t get complaints, except from the usual class of arseholes who complain about everything from Tom’s hair to Silna’s accent to the fact that it’s <i>cold</i> in the <i>Antarctic</i>.”</p><p>“I know, Francis.”</p><p>James looked good, was the thing. Francis didn’t want to see something that looked so fucking edible when he was spitting mad. He tore his eyes away and focused on his computer screen, where he had pulled up the official photos of his last expedition. There was a penguin. </p><p>“D’you want a cup of tea or something?” James asked.</p><p>“If I do, I’ll get Thomas to bring it to me,” Francis bit out. </p><p>He heard James sigh, and then the susurration of the door. When he glanced up, he saw James’s retreating back, the curve of his arse.</p><p> </p><p>The text came ten minutes after Francis got in the door.</p><p>“Couldn’t stop thinking about your prick,” it read. “Wanted to sit in your lap riding you as I did my reports all day.”</p><p>Francis grinned. His thumbs flew over the keyboard. </p><p>“I’m sure Mr. Franklin would have liked that.”</p><p>“I had to finger myself in the bathroom to take the edge off.”</p><p><i>Fuck</i>. Francis kicked his trousers off on the way to his bedroom and then tipped himself into his bed.</p><p>“Should have come by after and let me have a good long sniff.” He paused before hitting send. <i>Fuck it</i>, he thought. <i>What’s one more perversion between us?</i> Send.</p><p>Three dots popped up on the message thread. Francis rubbed his stirring cock over his boxer briefs.</p><p>“Naughty,” James wrote. “Next time.”</p><p>“Did it help?” Francis sent. “To have a wank at work.”</p><p>“Helped me not have an ill-timed hard on at the sight of you.”</p><p>Francis bit his lip.</p><p>“I was a shit to you today.”</p><p>“It’s part of your charm.”</p><p>Francis laughed.</p><p>“Now I know you’re joking,” he wrote.</p><p>“Mm, no. I’m far gone Francis. Go on without me.”</p><p>What was that supposed to mean? Francis rubbed his eyebrow. No three dots. His thumbs itched to keep the conversation going. </p><p>“Do you ever have a regular wank?” he asked. “Just your prick and your hand?”</p><p>James responded quickly. “Not my thing.”</p><p>Francis’s heart sped up. God, it was ideal, wasn’t it? Someone whose entire mindset around sex was how to get his arse stuffed. No more pretending that’s not where he wanted to be. No more pussyfooting around the whole subject. Just his cock, his mouth, his hand, anything he could find that would fit into James’s lovely arsehole.</p><p>“What have you got at hand?” he wrote.</p><p>“All my sex toys, but nothing appeals.”</p><p>“What else?”</p><p>Three dots. Francis rubbed his prick. He had saved some of James’s Fetlife photos, and he scrolled through them now. Fuck, his arse looked <i>luscious</i>. His phone buzzed.</p><p>“Hammer, hairbrush, doorknob, shampoo bottles, markers, video game joystick, candlesticks, vinegar bottle, hot sauce bottle, limoncello bottle, finial, pepper mill, curtain rods. You pick.”</p><p>Francis groaned. His prick firmed up under his hand.</p><p>“Facetime?”</p><p>“God, yes.”</p><p>Francis scrambled to hit the Facetime button. James answered before the first ring could complete. </p><p>“Hi,” he said. He fiddled with the placement of the phone and then stepped back to sit on his bed. He was naked but for the garters and stockings again, but his prick was free of its little cage this time. He had a light covering of body hair that thickened into a dark nest for said prick. </p><p>“Hi,” Francis said. “I’m a very big fan of the outfit.”</p><p>James smiled, bit one side of his lip.</p><p>“I wear it to work,” he said. “Makes me feel sexy.”</p><p>“You’re very, very sexy,” Francis said. “Drives me up the bloody wall.”</p><p>James laughed, a low rumble. Francis built himself a little laundry pile and set the phone up in it, then sat back among his pillows.</p><p>“Your accent drives me up the wall,” James said. “Your eyebrow and your arms and your beard and the fucking titan I know you’re hiding in your trousers. The way you say my name.”</p><p>“James.”</p><p>“<i>God</i>, yes, Francis, that’s exactly it.”</p><p>Francis laughed, and said his name again.</p><p>“Shit, Francis,” he said. “Tell me what I’m using before I explode.”</p><p>“Let me see the limoncello bottle,” he said. James leaned over the edge of the bed to rummage around, giving Francis an unfettered side view of his creamy arse. Francis wanted to bite it.</p><p>James presented the bottle. It was long and slim and torqued like a tornado. It would feel divine. The tender pink tip of James’s tongue dashed along his bottom lip, and Francis knew he was thinking the same.</p><p>“That’s the one,” Francis said. “Lube it up.” He shimmied out of his pants and kicked them to the floor before spreading his legs and pumping slowly at his cock.   </p><p>The limoncello bottle was open and empty. He would have to put the thick bottom in first, and to do that he had to open himself up. James knelt before the camera, legs spread and arse open to Francis’s gaze.</p><p>“Rub your hole first, that’s it,” Francis said. James rubbed the pads of two fingers in an anti-clockwise circle around his arse. He was generous with the slick. A sigh rumbled out of him. “Now slip a finger in, there’s a good darling. I wish I was there to suck on that pretty little arsehole.”</p><p>“Francis.” Muffled in the pillows. A finger slipped in, and then another. He rocked them in and out.</p><p>“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Francis said. “I’d eat you ’til you were slack and open and clutching for anything to fill you up. I’d push my whole tongue up you ’til you were screaming into those pillows of yours.” A third finger joined the party in his arse. James’s modest cock was full and swinging between his legs, yet to be touched. “Pull yourself open, gently now.” There was a whimper, and James complied. His arse stretched and gave way. He rolled his wrist and opened himself wider. “That’s so lovely, James, you’re doing so well.” Another whimper. “Slick up that bottle now.”</p><p>James removed his fingers and slathered the limoncello bottle in lube. He poised himself before the camera and set the thick end at his hole. </p><p>“Yes,” Francis said, voice tight. He squeezed his prick and began to jerk in earnest. “Press it in, that’s it.” </p><p>James set the bottle at an angle and first one side slid in and the rest followed. He gave a bellow and his arse sucked the bottle in more than half way.</p><p>“Shit,” Francis hissed. “Fuck, that’s so hot, James, Jesus Christ.”</p><p>James left the bottle in his arse and clutched his pillow, panting. His arse cheeks were flexing, his prick heavy and dangling.</p><p>“Francis,” he moaned.</p><p>“Such a good, pretty darling,” Francis said. “Do you like being stuffed up? Full and open?”</p><p>“Yes, yes,” James said. </p><p>“Would you like it if I spanked you now?”</p><p>“Francis!”</p><p>“You would, wouldn’t you. I’d grip that bottle and jerk it around inside you as I used my other hand to paint your pretty arse red. I’d get your thighs and your back and your bollocks too. You’d like that, James.”</p><p>“God, Francis.”</p><p>“Fuck yourself on that bottle, now, James,” Francis said.</p><p>James reached behind himself and tugged on the bottle. His arse seemed unwilling to give it up without encouragement, and so at Francis’s insistence, James had to use a firm hand. He set a swift rhythm that had him rocking and moaning, and Francis matched him, hand flying over his cock. </p><p>Francis told James how good he was being, how lovely, told him what a gorgeous arse he had on him, how accomplished he was at getting stuffed, told him he was like a dream. Told him how much he wanted inside. James moaned and grunted and chanted Francis’s name, which was fine indeed. </p><p>When James finally came, bottle popping from his arse as he slowly merged with the bed, Francis held himself at bay and kept up his commentary:</p><p>“God, look at that, I want to suck that jizz down, want to guzzle it like I’m dying of thirst, you’re so beautiful, James, your arse and your prick and your bloody <i>elbow</i> and everything else. I wish I were pumping into you right now.”</p><p>“Francis.” James flopped over onto his back, and then sat upright, his hair askew. He looked dazed and adorable, which was terrible, obviously. “Where would you prefer to come?” James asked in that maddening accent of his. “In my mouth or in my arse?”</p><p>“God,” Francis groaned. He used his free hand to cup his bollocks. “Your arse,” he said, breathless. “I want to flood it, fill it, make you taste it.”</p><p>“Yes, Francis,” James said. “That’s it, that’s what I want. Want to feel you for <i>days</i>, messing in my pants. I’d lick it right up at every visit to the loo.”</p><p>“Fuck! Fuck!” Francis shot his load all over himself. It dripped down his chin and his chest, pooled in his belly button. He sank into bed.</p><p>James hummed a low note of appreciation.</p><p>“Shit, Francis,” James said. “That was hot as fuck.”</p><p>Francis huffed out a laugh.</p><p>“I think you’ll find it merely a reflection of how wild you make me.”</p><p>“I can’t believe I thought you were straight.”</p><p>Francis sat up. James had the phone in his hand and he filled the screen from chest up, like a stately Roman bust. Francis arched an eyebrow at him.</p><p>“I’m not exactly close-mouthed about it,” he said.</p><p>James rolled his eyes.</p><p>“You don’t exactly let me hang about when you’re having personal conversations, either,” he said. “And Mr. Franklin’s got The Tragic Legend of Francis Crozier and Sophia Cracroft on lock.”</p><p>Francis snorted.</p><p>“I <i>was</i> a sad sack over Sophia,” he said. “But it’s been three years, for God’s sake. And for all I’m sober now, I’m not exactly a monk.”</p><p>James grinned. Ugh, he was perfectly symmetrical, but for a snaggle tooth that only heightened the effects of his appeal. </p><p>“A fact of which I am now intimately aware, thank you, Francis.”</p><p>“God,” Francis said. “Looking at you at work is hell.”</p><p>The corner of James’s mouth twisted. His thinking face.</p><p>“Was it before?”</p><p>“Yes,” Francis said. </p><p>James’s Adam’s apple bobbed. He licked his lips. Francis plucked the phone from the laundry pile and lay back against his pillows. </p><p>“It was almost bearable,” James said, “when I thought I had no chance.”</p><p>“Well.” Francis cleared his throat. He felt his ears flame like the little bloody narcs they were. And after all he’d seen and done tonight! “I’ve very discerning tastes, if not discriminating ones.”</p><p>James laughed.</p><p>“Do I get to hear the epic bisexual origin story?” he asked.</p><p>“Only if I get to hear the epic non-binary one.”</p><p>“Fair’s fair,” James said. Francis watched him slip his garters and stockings off and slide under the covers, snuggling in as if for a bedtime story. Francis wiped the come off of himself and pulled a blanket over his body.</p><p>“I’m not actually sure how epic it is,” he said. “Fairly boring, really. I always liked girls. Women. I liked them so much I thought nothing of the way I admired other boys, as well. I thought I simply wanted to be near them, wanted their attention, their looks, their manner. It wasn’t <i>done</i>, remember. You were gay or you were straight.” He lifted his shoulder in an apologetic shrug and jerked his chin toward the camera. “You were a boy or you were a girl.”</p><p>“Yes,” James said. </p><p>“I spent a long time not thinking anything was different about me. I loved tits. I loved women’s smells and shapes and hair and what have you. What did it matter if my eye lingered awhile on a man’s shoulders, or if I liked the low dark scent of a mate’s sweat?” He shrugged. “Then I joined the Navy, which, you know—”</p><p>James nodded, mouth stitching in amusement. He had been in the Navy, as well. Many years after Francis. </p><p>“Somehow both wildly homophobic and homoerotic at the same time,” James said.</p><p>“Ha! Yes, that’s it exactly.”</p><p>“You met Tom there.”</p><p>“And J.C.,” Francis said. “What you don’t know is that I fell madly in love with him.”</p><p>James’s eyebrows popped clear off his head.</p><p>“<i>Really</i>,” he said.</p><p>Francis scrunched his face up and passed a hand over it. His ears were hot again.</p><p>“It’s a bit embarrassing, really,” he said. “I was mad about him, hanging on his every word. We did everything together. We agreed on everything, laughed at the same things, had the same bloody <i>thoughts</i> half the time. I finally got up the gall to kiss him and he—well.” A self-deprecating smile stole over his lips. “He let me down easy. He didn’t rat me out to the commander. He still wanted to be mates.”</p><p>“I’m sorry,” James said.</p><p>“It was a long time ago,” Francis said. “There’ve been other people. Other loves.”</p><p>“You didn’t want to be career Navy?”</p><p>Francis shook his head.</p><p>“I chafed at the hierarchy of it,” he said. “And, if I’m being honest with myself, I wanted the option of being out. As much as a Northern Irish lad from a family on the wrong side of the religious divide could be.”</p><p>‘Christ, you’re <i>Catholic?</i>”</p><p>“You sound proper horrified,” Francis said, half of his mouth quirking upward.</p><p>“No, I’m just…I feel for you, coming out to that.”</p><p>Francis chewed his lip. Thirty years later and he was still barely out to his family. He had once broached the subject with his mother, who spoke over him about the church fete until he stopped talking. When he told his much older brother, Christopher, he was told to stop spouting bollocks and never mention it again, lest he kill their mother and their nan. It seemed an open secret, but one he would never be able to voice among his own family. That was easy enough, when he hadn’t been back to Banbridge in almost twenty years. His eldest sisters had sent him a congratulatory note when he announced his engagement to Sophia, but he hadn’t heard a word since it had been broken. Sometimes, Charlotte or Sarah or Georgie would visit him in London, and they knew— they <i>knew</i>—but they all maintained the polite fiction that they were a functional family, and part of that was in the enduring illusion of Francis’s heterosexuality.</p><p>“Your turn,” Francis said.</p><p>“It’s very boring,” James said in a warning tone. He sat up and crossed his legs like a pretzel beneath him. Francis could see the damp curl of his cock lying against his pale inner thigh.</p><p>“You sat through mine and made all the appropriate sounds,” Francis said. “It can’t be any worse.”</p><p>“Well.” James took a deep breath. “To steal your phrase, you were a boy or you were a girl. It never occurred to me that there could be anything else. I tried so <i>hard</i> to be a boy like my brother was, like my mates were. But it always seemed like they knew something I didn’t, like someone had told them the secrets of boyhood and had forgotten me along the way. I kept waiting to be let in on the fun.”</p><p>Francis grunted an acknowledgement. </p><p>“It can be easy to ignore how wrong you feel,” James said, “when you know you’re queer and can pin the wrongness on that. Here I was, a failed boy, and my eye only landed on other boys, failed or otherwise, ergo, I was gay, right? So I thought, that’s what this is. As a suit it was ill-fitting, but everyone told me how good it looked, how ‘me’ it was, so I thought, who cares if it itches? Who cares if it cuts the wrong way? If it pinches here and there.”</p><p>“Oh, James.”</p><p>James cocked his head and smiled.</p><p>“It wasn’t til after the Navy, after uni, that I put it to words: I wasn’t a man. I had never been a boy, and I had never become a man. I thought this meant I was a woman, and the thought of it made me weep. I didn’t precisely want to be a woman, either, but if I wasn’t a man, what else was there? I resolved to stiffen my upper lip and live with it, never telling anyone.”</p><p>“Awful,” Francis said. James nodded.</p><p>“I know. I know!” A laugh. “How cruel we can be to ourselves. Crueler than we might ever imagine being to someone else.” </p><p>“We’re unforgiving creatures,” Francis said. “Go on.”</p><p>“So some years pass and I begin to hear these words more often, these other ways of being. Non-binary. Genderqueer. Gender fluid. Agender. And we’d always been there, among the queers and the perfectly straight and narrows alike. And something inside me warmed. That’s me, I thought. That’s what I am, really. If gender is a horizontal spectrum, male to female, I’m somewhere off the line, floating in the space around it. Always have been, always will be. But now that I have the language to name it, now that I’m not the only one who feels this way, I feel anchored in it, instead of unmoored.” He shrugged, and a nervy little smile passed over his mouth. “So. That’s the rather uninspired tale of my coming out to myself.”</p><p>“I’m glad,” Francis said. “I’m glad you settled into yourself. You—” The words dried up. It seemed a bald and mortifying thing to say, now that they weren’t doing some facsimile of fucking: <i>you’re more beautiful when you are yourself</i>. “It suits you.”</p><p>James propped the phone up against something again and leaned in to rest his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands.</p><p>“So!” he said. “What’s for dinner, Francis?”</p><p>“I’ve some salmon in the freezer, and a potato. You?” </p><p>“Might run down to the chippy on the next block,” James said. “If I can dredge up the wherewithal to get dressed.”</p><p>“Be naked,” Francis said. “Be naked all the time.”</p><p>James threw his head back and laughed. The line of his neck was strong and beautiful. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In a meeting the next morning, the only seat left open was the one beside James. Francis met his eyes, wide under raised brows. <i>Who, me?<i> The barest twist of that mouth gave him away. Francis’s cock twitched. <i>Bloody tease</i>, he thought, and took his seat. </i></i></p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>James’s thigh budged up against his, warm and firm. Francis held stock still. Across the table, J.C. pointed at the corners of his own mouth and sent him an exaggerated grin. Francis realized he was scowling. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>At any rate, he had a reputation to keep up.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Frankie says <i>relax</i>,” James murmured under his breath, and Francis jolted. He glanced at him. James wore a bland expression and looked at nothing in particular. His ankle hooked round Francis’s.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis forced himself to untense his shoulders and relax his spine into the chair. He unclenched his jaw. He rubbed his ankle against James’s and listened to his close and even breathing.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>If Mr. Franklin had anything interesting to say on his “guest experience improvement techniques” presentation, Francis didn’t hear it. It was unlikely anyway. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>As the meeting wore on, James’s hand crept onto Francis’s knee. Francis planted his elbows on the table and rested his mouth on the knot of his hands, hoping he looked riveted and serious as he pushed his leg closer to James. He didn’t dare venture a look in his direction. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>The meeting ended and James stood abruptly and strode from the meeting room without a backward glance. Francis lingered a moment to calm himself, making thoughtful faces and nodding at something Ned was saying. When he was finally in the clear, he made his way back to his office at a very normal pace, making very normal greetings to the customer service assistants and travel agents in cubes along the way. He sat behind his desk and let out a long breath, eyes closed, before he shook himself and jiggled his mouse to wake his computer. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>A notification popped up on their office instant messenger. It was from one James Fitzjames (Senior Risk Assessment Analyst).</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“I’m wearing a plug right now.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis’s mouth went dry. He glanced out at the corridor. No one was around but Thomas, whose head was bent low over something or other at his desk.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“That basement bathroom,” he typed. “For nervous shitters.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“And if a nervous shitter should arrive?”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“They’ll find a locked door and will have to gird their loins.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“5 minutes.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>The chat closed. Francis thumped his head on his desk. He spent the next four minutes staring through Tom Blanky’s email on the screen, leg bouncing frantically. He willed his cock to cease its eager filling. With sixty seconds left, he rose and resumed his very normal pace and very normal greetings and made his way down the corridor and to the elevator, where he hit the B button and waited as it sank, heart thudding so loudly he was sure the whole office could hear it. When the doors opened, he forced himself to walk sedately through the halls until he reached the door to the bathroom. He glanced at his phone for the time. He swallowed and pulled the door open. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>James turned and met his eyes. Pink had splashed across his olive complexion, high on his cheeks. His eyes were large and clear, his lips parted and glistening. Francis stepped inside and turned the lock.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>He felt paralyzed by the heady uncertainty of it all. They were going to do this—he and James. As they were. In their work clothes, with Mr. Franklin upstairs. Were they meant to speak? Would there be kissing?</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>James reached out and bunched a hand in his shirt. Francis staggered forward. Their breath was heavy, the hard sound of it mingled in the air. James crowded him, set his nose on Francis’s pulse point and heaved in a breath.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis couldn’t speak. James sank to his knees and cast his gaze up. Francis met his eyes helplessly, disbelieving. James made short work of his belt and flies and freed his cock, which stood at half-mast already. James made a low growling hum of appreciation and nuzzled it, breathing deep. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis’s eyes wanted to slip shut, but he wanted to watch. He set a hand in James’s hair, stroking. James opened his mouth wide and swallowed half of Francis’s cock down without breaking eye contact. Francis tamped viciously down on the loud groan that threatened to break from him. James moaned around his mouthful, eyes fluttering, and sucked firmly, pushing the back of his tongue slowly over Francis’s slit. His hand came up and tangled with Francis’s on his head. He squeezed Francis’s fingers and then let go. Francis, breath ragged, obliged him by gripping his hair at the root. James’s eyes slid shut altogether and he sank further down Francis’s cock, sucking hard. Francis let his breath come heavy.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>He wanted to tell James he was beautiful, such a good cocksucker, a fucking dream made flesh, but he didn’t trust his voice, the door, the walls. James sucked him to full hardness in under a minute, pairing suction with tonguework like a dizzying choreography as Francis tugged his hair. He could only take so much—the head and a bit more, but he pumped with his hand and kept the foreskin back. Francis was enraptured, staggering back to lean against the stall. James followed his cock like a starving creature and groaned around it freely. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>He dropped his hands and undid his own trousers. He reached a hand behind himself and, Francis assumed by the squeeze of his eyes and the muffled shout around his prick, worked the plug inside him. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Fuck,” Francis growled. James opened his eyes and looked up at him. They were watery and leaking from the effort to take his prick deeper. His color was up and his nostrils flared. Francis traced his hand over James’s jaw and cupped his mouth, cock and all. “Get up,” he said. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>James pulled off his cock and gasped for breath. He pushed himself up and braced his hands against the stall. Francis moved behind him and rucked his shirt up his back and yanked his pants and trousers down. The garters, clipped to his stockings, stopped them from dropping altogether. Francis snapped the garters. James grunted.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis caught sight of himself in the mirror, red and panting. In it he met James’s gaze. There was a challenge there. He swallowed and looked down at James’s arse, lean musculature inviting a slap as much as a fuck. Francis smacked him and James muffled a shout in his bicep. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>The plug’s flange was nestled in the crack of his arse. Francis slapped it, and James moaned, rubbing his face into his arm.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“You’re a filthy bugger, wearing this to work,” Francis said. “Did you think I wouldn’t see? You’ll need to be punished appropriately.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>He slapped it again and James’s knees buckled. Francis held him up by his hips, and then grasped the flange. He pulled enough to make James groan, but his arse wouldn’t give it up.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Greedy, are we?” Francis said. He braced an arm over the small of James’s back, hand bunched in his shirt, and pulled the plug firmly until he popped out and James gave a cry. It had a long, slim stem, shiny with slick, and a wide, fat plug that tapered like a tear drop. Francis transferred it to his left hand and held the stem between two fingers, flange in his palm. He’d need it later.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>He gathered up the lube still on it and slicked his prick. He set the wide head of his cock against James’s winking hole. He glanced at the mirror, where he found James flushed and gleaming with sweat, hair licking up all over. James nodded once, sharp, and Francis plunged his cock inside. James howled, and Francis clapped his free hand over his mouth. He drew back and thrust back in as James screamed against his palm. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis pressed on the small of his back with his left hand, forcing James’s back to bow so he could fuck deeper. James clenched him hard and hot.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“You’re so fucking tight,” Francis growled in to James’s ear. “If I didn’t know you were such a whore for any passing phallus I’d think you were untouched.” James whimpered and arched his arse back into the penetration. “Are you ready?”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>James nodded, and Francis dropped his hand from his mouth, gripped him by both hips, and set a swift, punishing fuck that sent his cock deeper with each thrust until his balls were slapping James’s arse in a sweaty, obscene rhythm that filled the bathroom alongside their grunts and moans and heavy breath. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis watched them fuck in the mirror. James had his teeth over his lip, his eyes closed, his head bowed; he met Francis thrust for thrust, hands on the stall. His prick swung hard and red beneath him, and Francis wanted to cup it, jerk it, suck up its slick emissions, but he ignored it. He wanted to see if James could come impaled on his cock alone, and he thought that might be James’s preference as well. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>He tore his eyes from the mirror and looked down to where James’s hole was pink and taut, tight around his cock. He looked as though he were being split, the stretch huge, the skin strained. Francis’s arousal tightened at the sight of it, wound hot around the base of his spine.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Shit, James,” he said, and began drilling him with renewed speed. James cried out and arched his back deeper.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Fuck, Francis, fuck me,” James panted. “Don’t stop, I’m gonna, I’m gonna—”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>James spasmed around Francis’s cock and his body went rigid and then quivered. He choked on air and then let out a long, ecstatic sigh. His greedy arsehole clenched and unclenched like a pumping fist. His head thumped against the stall as he went limp. Francis held him up and kept fucking him, hips gone jerky. James whimpered.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Fuck, you’re huge, Francis,” he said.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Too much?” Francis said, breathless. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“God, yes,” James groaned, and pushed his arse back. “My guts are gonna be torn up for days.” He moaned and ground into Francis’s prick. He squeezed his muscles around him.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Fuck,” Francis said. “More.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“I’m gonna be loose now,” James said, clasping hard at Francis’s cock. “No other cock will be able to fill me up right. You’ve ruined me, you beast.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Shit, James,” Francis said. “Fuck.” He lost control of his thrusts and yanked James’s hips back hard. “Fuck, fuck, James.” </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>He trembled for a moment on the precipice of bliss, and then James moaned and squeezed his prick with his arsehole and Francis’s mind blasted away along with his orgasm. He gasped and held James still and pumped all his tension and all his desire into him. It felt like he had emptied himself of more than just his come.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>When he came back to himself, he was propped up on James and panting into his shoulders. He pulled back and steadied his prick, still lodged in James’s arse, before pulling out. James hissed and swore, and when Francis drove the plug back in, James yelped.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis leaned in to speak low into his ear.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“So you don’t forget who bred you,” he said. “Next time I’ll suck it out of you.” With that he stepped away, pulled his trousers back up, and went to the sink to wash his hands. He watched in the mirror as James gingerly touched the plug, rearranged his skewed garters, pulled his pants and trousers up. When he turned around, their eyes met in the mirror again. Francis smirked at him, and James licked his lips. His eyes were dark. Come spattered the stall wall and the floor.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis dried his hands and made sure his shirt looked respectable. He watched James watching him. He wanted a drink of water. He wanted a shot of whiskey. He wanted to say a million things and none would leave his lips. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>He turned away from the mirror and left the bathroom without a word.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>When he saw James throughout the office the rest of the day, his gaze skittered away before James could catch him looking, but not before he saw how James moved so stiffly, the chary way he sat down. Sometimes, James did catch him looking, and smirked.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Even out of the office and away from the scene of the crime, so to speak, Francis couldn’t stop thinking of James’s arsehole. Was it puffy and sore? Was it hot to touch? Was it begging to be licked and soothed? Did it need cream and a finger or two inside?</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>He drummed his fingers on the arm of his couch, waiting for James to text him. He hovered his thumbs over the keyboard, trying to think of what to say.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>
      <strike>Hope it wasn’t too much</strike>
    </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>
      <strike>Are you all right</strike>
    </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>
      <strike>Tell me the moment you’re good to go again</strike>
    </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>A message from James popped up, thank fuck.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“What I can’t figure out, Francis, is why Sophia or anyone would let such a spectacular fuck go.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Relief flowed through him. He settled back into the couch, smiling.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“It’s my sparkling personality, I am assured,” Francis replied. “How’s that lovely little arse of yours?”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Wet and loose yet, just like you knew it would be, you prick.” Wink emoji. Eggplant emoji. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Sore?”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Mm, deliciously.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>
      <strike>Have you ever taken a cock like mine before?</strike>
    </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis tsked at himself. It embarrassed him, how badly he wanted James to tell him it was good, that he wanted him again, and again, and, preferably, again. He couldn’t even look it in the face.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“I could lick it for you,” Francis wrote instead, and held his breath as he hit send.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Ugh, you’re a tease, Francis.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>A photo popped up. It was the arsehole in question, a bit pink, a bit swollen, gleaming a little with Francis’s leavings. Francis’s cock was too eager and gave a jump at the sight.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Beautiful,” Francis wrote. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Glad you like,” James wrote. “I loved getting it this way.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>
      <strike>Come over</strike>
    </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis huffed, frustrated with himself.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“You’re still leaking,” he wrote. He hit send and then felt stupid, stating the obvious.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Did as you said,” James said. “Wore that bloody plug all day. There was a veritable cascade when I got home and took it out.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Did you have a wank,” Francis asked. He rubbed his prick idly through his boxer briefs.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Mm, a little. Didn’t come though.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Why not.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Thinking about holding it til next time you fuck me.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis groaned. He gripped the base of his cock hard to stop it from getting any ideas. Tomorrow was Friday. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to last the weekend.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“When do you think,” he wrote.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Do you have room in your schedule for tomorrow?”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i><i>Christ</i>.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“You won’t be sore?”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“I’ll be right as rain in a few hours, and it feels bloody fantastic as is.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>
      <strike>You’re killing me James</strike>
    </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“No plug this time,” he wrote. “No getting ready beforehand. Gonna eat you out.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Stop, stop,” James sent. “I’m trying not to come over here.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>One corner of Francis’s mouth lifted.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“So what’s for dinner,” he asked.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>A photo came in. It was a bowl of ice.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“The bottom’s diet,” James wrote.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis’s laugh echoed through his flat.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>They met in the bathroom over the office lunch hour. Francis pushed James until he braced his hands over the sink, half bent over it. Their eyes met in the mirror before Francis sank to his knees, pulling James’s trousers and pants down along the way. The garters were gone, and James’s arse was bare to him. Francis sigh and ran his hands over the downy curve of it. He laid his nose in the divot above his crease and breathed in deep. He heard James’s breath hitch.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis spread James’s cheeks. His hole was a tiny wrinkled furrow once more, a hint of redness the only evidence that Francis had blasted him less than a day ago. Francis sighed happily again and nuzzled into the crack, sniffing and licking at the skin and hair and sweat. Above him James choked off grunts and gurgles.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis licked a stripe over his hole with the broad flat of his tongue. James muffled a scream and thumped a fist against the mirror as he pushed back into Francis’s tongue. Francis laughed and flickered the tip of his tongue over the rim of James’s hole, quick and firm, then he closed his mouth around it and sucked. James gave a strangled shout and then reached a hand behind him to tangle in Francis’s hair. He held his head fast as he ground back into his mouth. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis stroked up and down his hips and thighs as he lashed his hole. It loosened to him and he dipped his tongue in. James nearly squealed, and Francis had to hold him steady. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Can you come like this?” he asked, voice destroyed.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“I don’t—” James was breathless. “Maybe?”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Let’s try,” Francis said, and renewed his onslaught on James’s arse. James moaned, too loud, and Francis gave him a smack, which only made him push back with more verve.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis alternated flicking the rim with sucking on the whole of it with fucking in as deep as his tongue would go. He pulled his own prick out and began to wank himself hard. James’s hole was slack and sucking back at him, the hungry little fucker. James’s cries grew more and more desperate until he wailed, “Francis, I can’t, I can’t, please, just get in me, fuck!”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>With a growl, Francis pulled James down til he lay on the tile and yanked his trousers away entirely. Francis fished in his pocket for a packet of lube before he kicked off his own and threw James’s legs over his shoulders. He tore open the packet and spurted it over James’s hole. He wiped the excess on his own prick and lined up. James looked up at him, dazed, mouth hanging open. The head of his cock slipped in like nothing, and James whimpered, pushed down. Francis thrust in past the second ring of muscle and James’s breath left him in a rush. He squeezed his eyes shut and Francis pressed in deeper. He jerked his hips and then he was fully seated, flush against James’s arse, as James moaned and trembled. Francis gripped his thighs against his chest.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>His knees were going to feel it all weekend, but Francis fucked without care to anything but the hot tight clench of James’s body, the way he cried out at the stretch and thrust, the way he scrabbled at Francis’s back, his arse, the way his prick burned a hot column where it pressed between their bellies. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“You’re a fucking miracle, you are,” Francis said. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Suddenly James made a desperate sound and scrambled to pull his shirt up, and then he was coming in long, thick ropes over his chest and stomach.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“<i>Yes</i>,” Francis hissed and fucked him harder. He could see his nipples—tiny and tan and pebbled. He bent to get his lips on one and pluck at it with his teeth, and James gave a weak wail at the touch.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>James’s knees slid off Francis’s shoulders and he caught them in his elbows only to bend him further and fuck him deeper. Suddenly James seized up again and choked off a gasp, and the hot pump of his cock spurted again between them. James’s mouth hung open and his eyes fluttered shut, rolling behind his eyelids. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Oh, fuck,” Francis said. He rammed into James again and again just like that, and he came for a third time, a thin cry breaking from his throat. Francis roared and ground deep inside him, rocked and jerked until his vision blacked at the edges and he threw his head back and came hard.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis wanted nothing more than to sink into a bed and surrender to oblivion but he was confronted with the cold, vaguely disgusting reality of the bathroom tile instead.  </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Urgh.” He sat up and blinked at James, who was already up and dabbing himself clean. Francis lurched to his feet. He met James’s eye in the mirror before James turned and went into the stall. The lock slid shut, the clack of metal on metal louder than it should have been. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis looked at himself in the mirror. He was bright pink and sweaty with stupid hair, his dick hanging out like a dead balloon. Had anyone ever looked so absurd? An old man with a wet, soiled prick in a filthy restroom where anyone could pass by, sullying someone younger and more beautiful and vibrant than he’d ever been. He might as well go cottaging. He was disgusted with himself. He washed his cock and his hands, scrubbed his face and beard, straightened his hair and shirt best he could, and hurried out of the bathroom before James could emerge from the stall. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis took his time getting home that evening. He stopped at a used bookshop and an Oxfam and an Indian take-away. He idled by a record shop manned by a single bloke who looked even more stooped and hang-dog than Francis felt. He ducked into a sweeties shop and picked up a handful of cream puffs.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>When he got home he checked his phone. There was one text from J.C., asking if he wanted to come round for dinner tomorrow night. Francis was curiously disappointed, but responded in the positive to J.C. It had been a while since he’d last seen Ann and the kids. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Want me to bring anything?” he asked.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Those famous potatoes of yours wouldn’t go amiss,” J.C. replied.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Aye aye, captain,” Francis sent back, and made a note to buy some spuds and the good butter.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>He looked at his message thread with James. Nothing since yesterday, when they’d talked into the night about bad dates and first crushes and the sounds Mr. Franklin made when he ate and the weird lad down in billing who wouldn’t stop talking about his definitely real, totally body-hair-free girlfriend in Japan.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>
      <strike>Hey</strike>
    </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>
      <strike>My knees are all</strike>
    </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>
      <strike>What are you</strike>
    </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis sighed. He couldn’t get it right.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Three dots popped up and his heart leapt. He watched it for a minute before it disappeared. His spine sagged. He put the phone in his pocket and worked on getting a plate and silverware for his food. Garlic naan, pilau rice, chicken korma, lassi. He wanted to text James what he was eating. He wanted to text James to come over and share with him—it was enough for two. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>
      <strike>So I think we should</strike>
    </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>
      <strike>You smell good</strike>
    </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>
      <strike>Weekend plans?</strike>
    </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Nothing was right. Francis couldn’t help but feel he’d put a foot wrong. He didn’t know the rules of work fucking with someone you’d never liked but had desperately wanted all the years of your acquaintance and then found on a fetish website by accident. It was cold around the office, not speaking, barely looking, having to sneer or be snide if they were together in front of others, and then the explosion of heat the moment they were alone was like whiplash. It felt like neither was real—or both were, which was worse somehow. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>He scrolled through their messages again. He’d been truthful here, he thought. Perhaps not all the way, perhaps there were omissions, perhaps he had guarded his vulnerabilities with jealous zeal, but he hadn’t said anything that wasn’t true. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i></i>
    <i>Had James? Francis didn’t think so. Tom had once told him he had a bullshit detector like the nose of a bloodhound.<br/> <br/>The messages shifted and Francis felt a thrill go up his spine. He scrolled down and found another three dots rippling. </i>
  
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>They disappeared presently.</i>
  </i>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Francis always told himself he would sleep in on the weekends, but without fail he would squint awake at seven, huffing out a sigh at the cheery sunbeams cutting across his bed. Or, more often than not, the steady pitter patter of rain.</p>
<p>He grumbled, throwing off his covers. He had to piss.</p>
<p>He did his business and inspected his beard as he brushed his teeth. It had gone unruly. Should he shave it off? It had been some time since he’d presented a bare face. It always seemed to shock people. James had said he liked the beard, though. Just a trim then.</p>
<p>He set his trimmer at a two and neatened himself up. He look a real razor to his neck and shaved away the stuff that made him look like a billy goat. He wiped himself clean and dry and squinted at himself in the mirror. He quirked his eyebrow. Sophia had once told him it made him look rakish, but now looking at himself pulling faces he felt like a fool and looked like one too. Sophia was right to leave him. James would see the wisdom in staying far away from Francis soon enough.</p>
<p>Nearly fifty. Never married. No one to warm his bed. No children. Barely on speaking terms with his family. Politely despised by his boss. What did he have to offer anyone, much less a lovely, vivacious young thing with all his life ahead of him?</p>
<p>It was better if he forgot all about James Fitzjames. Ignored him in the hallways. Feigned ignorance about the bathroom for nervous shitters. Francis would put his head down until it was time to sail into the Antarctic again, and James would find someone more suitable in no time. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Francis lazed about in a sullen wallow all morning and into the afternoon. He looked at his phone for the billionth time and saw that it was after two. He swore and roused himself. He needed to go down the shops and get the ingredients he was missing.</p>
<p>He was nearly out the door when his phone buzzed. He fumbled getting it out of his pocket. His heart swooped when he saw it was James.</p>
<p>“Missing some data on the 2017 Antarctic Experience voyage. Any chance you have access to the files at home?” </p>
<p>His hopes dropped as quickly as they rose.</p>
<p>“Working on the weekend, James? For shame.”</p>
<p>“Needs must.”</p>
<p>Francis chewed his lip. He checked the time. </p>
<p>“I should be able to access my work computer remotely but I’ve never been able to get it to work.”</p>
<p>“I can walk you through. Call me?”</p>
<p>Francis sighed. He imagined how it would go—James slowly explaining the things Francis already knew how to do, then growing increasingly frustrated when he got into the same permissions loop he always did when he tried remote access, and having to filter it all through the phone and through Francis. </p>
<p>He hit the phone icon. It barely rang before James picked it up.</p>
<p>“Hi,” he said.</p>
<p>“Hey,” Francis said. There was an awkward pause, and then he made a snap decision. “Look, if you have a minute, you could just come over. You can tinker with remote access and then if you get in you can look at all my files for that expedition.”</p>
<p>“Great!” James said, sounding far too chipper. “I’ll be there in a bit.”</p>
<p>“Wait!” Francis winced. </p>
<p>“What,” James said.</p>
<p>“Could you—” He grimaced. “—could you get me some stuff? I’ll pay you back. I was just out the door and now there won’t be time.”</p>
<p>“Oh. You’re busy.”</p>
<p>“Not <i>busy</i> busy,” Francis said hastily. “You can definitely pop round. I just needed potatoes and butter for dinner.”</p>
<p>“Oh. Well all right, anything special?”</p>
<p>“Two packs of Kerrygold,” he said. “Chives. And six pounds of whichever potatoes look better, the queens or Kerr’s pink.”</p>
<p>“Don’t tell me this is Francis Crozier’s famous mashed potato recipe,” James said, amusement edging his voice. Francis’s belly warmed.</p>
<p>“Someone’s been telling tales out of school.”</p>
<p>“J.C. is very effusive,” James said. “All right, Francis. Twenty minutes? Half an hour.”</p>
<p>“Ta, James, you’re a star.”</p>
<p>“I’m imposing on you and you’re letting me,” James said. “See you soon.”</p>
<p>“Bye.”</p>
<p>Francis set his phone down, beaming. Then he looked up at his sitting room. Stray socks and toppled stacks of books and random papers everywhere. He had twenty minutes to make the place presentable.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Francis opened the door to James holding out butter and potatoes like pom poms, an exaggerated grin on his face. He wore dark wash skinny jeans and a tailored blazer over a simple cotton tee. A leather messenger bag crossed over his body and came to rest on one hip. And there was something on his face.</p>
<p>“Are you wearing <i>eyeliner?</i>” Francis said.</p>
<p>James dropped the groceries to his sides and curled his mouth up in a flirtatious smirk.</p>
<p>“Just a touch, darling,” he said, and slid past Francis into the flat. He barely brushed his body against him, which was disappointing in the extreme. </p>
<p>Francis shut the door behind him and followed James into the kitchen, where he set down the potatoes and then opened the fridge and looked at him with raised brows.</p>
<p>“Butter in the fridge or out to soften?” he asked.</p>
<p>“Fridge is fine,” Francis said, and cleared his throat. He looked at James’s arse, on display in the tight jeans, as he set the butter on a shelf and then closed the door. Francis’s eyes snapped back up to James’s face. The liner was subtle, something not black and not thick. Francis hadn’t the eye to be more specific. There may have been a touch of shadow as well, emphasizing the shape of his eyes, the kaleidoscope hazel of them. <i>You look lovely</i>, was poised on the tip of Francis’s tongue, but what came out was, “The computer’s in the other room.”</p>
<p><i>Fuck.</i> </p>
<p>James’s eyes dimmed and his mouth flattened, but he gave a determined nod and followed the sweep of Francis’s hand out of the kitchen and toward the couch.</p>
<p>“I can set it up at the desk if you’re more comfortable sitting up properly,” Francis said. </p>
<p>“This is fine,” James said, pulling the messenger bag over his head. He pulled out his own laptop and power cord. He looked up at Francis with that questioning face, and Francis pointed to the power strip tucked under the couch. He plugged it into the power strip but not his laptop, toed off his shoes, crossed his legs up on the couch, and set Francis’s computer in his lap. “Oh,” he said when confronted with the passcode screen.</p>
<p>“Here,” Francis said. He tapped in the code. “I’ll write it down so you don’t need me to put it in again.”</p>
<p>“That’s not—yeah, thanks.”</p>
<p>“I trust you,” Francis said, and James looked at him for a long moment before dropping his gaze to the screen. </p>
<p>“Thank you, Francis,” he said. Francis stood there looking at him for a moment, but shook himself and went to get a post-it to write his password on. </p>
<p>James quietly typing on his couch inspired in Francis nothing so much as the sensation that he didn’t know what to do with his hands. He puttered about the kitchen, checking his time and adjusting the blinds. He looked out the window. A woman was walking a Scottish terrier whose cheery little tail had become a blur. </p>
<p>He wandered into the living room, where he stared at the back of James’s head. It was artfully mussed, licking up here and there. Francis wanted to smell it. To pull it. He turned around abruptly and went into his bedroom, where he looked around. He ought to make the bed, he supposed. If James had to use the toilet, he’d have to come in here, and it should look…inviting.</p>
<p>After he made the bed he went into the loo. He gave the toilet a scrub for good measure and closed the bath curtain. He straightened the soap and toothbrush and toothpaste on the little shelf between mirror and sink. He wiped the mirror down. Eventually he ran out of ways to make everything shine.</p>
<p>He emerged from the bedroom to find James helping himself to a glass of water.</p>
<p>“Shit, I didn’t even offer you anything,” he said, resisting the urge to yank at his own hair.</p>
<p>James faced him and turned the tap off.</p>
<p>“There you are,” he said.</p>
<p>“Sorry, I just—” Francis jammed his thumb over his shoulder toward the bedroom. “Didn’t want to disturb. I’ll make tea, and then I should get started on the potatoes.”</p>
<p>“I won’t put you out, Francis,” James said. “You’re busy. I’ll just wait ’til Monday to get all this done.”</p>
<p>“No, no, you’re not putting me out. Stay as long as you want.” </p>
<p>
  <i>Christ, could he get any more pathetic?</i>
</p>
<p>“Francis…”</p>
<p>“It’s teatime anyway,” Francis said. “Is builder’s too gauche for you?”</p>
<p>James’s mouth twisted unhappily.</p>
<p>“I’m not nearly as <i>fancy</i> as you seem to think I am, Francis.”</p>
<p>Francis nearly snorted. He caught himself and arched an eyebrow instead.</p>
<p>“All right,” he said. “Builder’s it is.”</p>
<p>James took a long draw of his water. Francis watched his throat working and forced himself to look away. James moved away from the sink and Francis took his place, filling the kettle. He set it on its base and tapped the lever, and then got to work pulling out mugs and sugar and cream and spoons. He dropped a teabag in each mug, and when the kettle shut off he poured the steaming water over them. He brought out the tray and set it on the coffee table before the couch.</p>
<p>James gave him a brittle smile.</p>
<p>“Thank you, Francis,” he said. Francis felt wrong footed. He reached a hand out and drew it back again, fiddling with the hem of his shirt. </p>
<p>“Let it steep some,” he said. James sent him a look over the computer screen. “Obviously.” Francis cleared his throat. “I’ll. Get those potatoes started.”</p>
<p>He retreated to the kitchen. If he had a tail it would be tucked between his legs. He racked his brain for where this had all gone so odd. He had been<i>inside</i> James barely a day ago. He had made him come all over himself three times. Now his balls were blue and his tongue was tied and James was in his flat talking work and looking at him all annoyed and there was make up on his face and he smelled good. Francis wished he could just say the right thing and make it all easy. Easy as sliding his cock into James’s needy little arse.</p>
<p><i>Fuck</i>.</p>
<p>He put the potatoes in the sink and turned the tap on. He scrubbed each one until they were clean and then patted them dry. He got out his peeler and gave each potato a rough go until they looked like fat little zebras. His recipe was nothing special; people were just enthusiastic because they didn’t know skin and chunks made mashed potatoes better, not worse. That and the cheese. </p>
<p>He got his biggest pot out and put all the potatoes in. He filled it halfway with water and set the flame on high. It would take a while to get to a boil. In the meantime he pulled out the cream and butter and chives and cheese and garlic. He got to work chopping the chives. When that was done he stared at the counter. He peered over into the living room. James was poking the keyboard, half-heartedly by the sound of it. Perhaps he too was stymied by remote access.</p>
<p>“How’s it going?” he asked. James popped up and turned his neck to look at him.</p>
<p>“I’ve tried all my tricks and now I’m having to look up things I hadn’t considered before.” He held up his own laptop. “I told Mr. Franklin the systems were fucked but God forbid he enter the 21st century.”</p>
<p>“He imagines himself a 19th century explorer and conveniently forgets how much he loves his roasts and flush toilets and grandchildren on Facetime.”</p>
<p>James cracked a grin at him.</p>
<p>“Can you imagine?”</p>
<p>“Ugh.” Francis shook his head. “He’d sail us straight into a mountainside if he could.”</p>
<p>James laughed, a low, rich sound, and set aside the computer. He jerked his head as if to beckon him. </p>
<p>“Have tea with me, Francis,” James said.  </p>
<p>Francis glanced at the potatoes, then picked up his mug and sat on the couch, leaving a respectable cushion’s length between them. James peered at him curiously.</p>
<p>“So where did you learn how to make these famous potatoes?” he asked, stirring his tea.</p>
<p>“My nan,” Francis said. “And I wish I could say it was a real recipe, but really I just throw everything in until it looks all right.”</p>
<p>“The best way to make food,” James said. He took a sip of his tea. </p>
<p>“It’s awful really,” Francis said. “More butter than you think sane, and salt.”</p>
<p>“Bet your nan lived to be a hundred eating like this, too.”</p>
<p>Francis barked out a laugh.</p>
<p>“Aye,” he said. “After she survived being told I was a big queer, we thought nothing could kill her.”</p>
<p>James burst into laughter and had to put his mug down. </p>
<p>“Jesus, Francis. Did she finally choke to death on one of your jokes?”</p>
<p>“You’ve found me out,” Francis said. “I’m the scourge of Catholic nans everywhere.”</p>
<p>James tucked his smile into his tea. Francis dropped his attention to his own tea, half-forgotten, and sipped at it for something to do.  </p>
<p>“So sometimes you make her potatoes,” James said softly. “When you want to remember something easy, and comforting, and long ago.”</p>
<p>Francis swallowed. He wanted to sidle closer, wanted to feel the heat of James’s body, the realness of him taking up space in Francis’s own flat. He didn’t move. He felt very cowardly, then.</p>
<p>“I hope you like them,” Francis said, voice a croak. James’s brows rose.</p>
<p>“I get to try?”</p>
<p>“Of course,” Francis said, and winged an apology through the ether to J.C. He’d have to text some excuse when he got a moment. He was suddenly and desperately ill, obviously, and couldn’t possibly leave his flat under the circumstances.</p>
<p>James set his tea down, mouth flattened to a little line. Any lurking mirth had left his eyes.</p>
<p>“I really didn’t mean to intrude, Francis,” he said. “Here you are making a nice dinner for yourself and I barge in without so much as a by your leave.”</p>
<p>“I invited you,” Francis said. “What other by your leave do you need?” <i>What the fuck was a ‘by your leave,’ now that he was thinking of it?</i> “I’ve some chicken thighs we can roast up, and rainbow carrots.”</p>
<p>“<i>Rainbow</i> carrots?” James said. “Now who’s fancy?”</p>
<p>“It’s nice to have the variety!” Francis said. James laughed again, eyes warm.</p>
<p>“Only if you’re sure you wouldn’t mind the company,” James said. “Honestly, Francis, you won’t hurt my feelings.”</p>
<p>“Well how ’bout this,” Francis said. “You <i>will</i> hurt mine if you leave before we can stuff ourselves comatose on Nan’s potatoes.”</p>
<p>James’s smile was, impossibly, shy. </p>
<p>“All right, Francis,” he said. He cupped his mug in both hands as if warming them. Francis forced himself to look away and stand up.</p>
<p>“Come on,” he said. “Let’s check on the artery cloggers now.”</p>
<p>He pulled his phone from his pocket as James trailed him into the kitchen. He set it on the counter and peered into the boiling pot. He turned the heat down a bit and fished one of the potatoes out with some tongs. He nodded at his silverware drawer.</p>
<p>“Get a fork and stick it in,” he said. James obliged him. The fork sank in easily. “Good, lovely.” </p>
<p>Francis set the potato back into the pot and turned the heat off altogether. He drained the water and handed James the masher. James’s fingers brushed his. Francis’s stomach flipped. James’s eyes cut to his. Francis pulled his hand away reluctantly.</p>
<p>“This is the fun bit,” he said. “Go on. Not too smooth now.”</p>
<p>James blinked at him but diverted his attention to the potatoes. He mushed them with a single ginger push.</p>
<p>“You’ll have to do better than that, James, for God’s sake.” </p>
<p>James cast a withering gaze at him and leaned into the task with more vigor. Francis smirked at him but was satisfied with the results. He picked up his phone.</p>
<p>“Awful timing but can I get a raincheck?” he typed out. “I feel a bit shite to be honest.”</p>
<p>Three dots popped up.</p>
<p>“Balls,” came the reply. “Do you want me to run you up a plate? It’s no trouble.”</p>
<p>Francis swore under his breath. James glanced at him, but Francis waved him off.</p>
<p>“No, thanks though. I really couldn’t eat a bite, think I’ll just go to bed.”</p>
<p>“Text me in the morning, yeah?”</p>
<p>Christ, now he felt like a git.</p>
<p>“Thanks, mate,” he wrote. <strike>Hopefully with some rest</strike>—best not to lay it on too thick. He sent his thanks and put his phone on do not disturb. </p>
<p>He peered into the pot. He chucked a slab of butter in.</p>
<p>“Want me to do it?” he asked.</p>
<p>“No, I’m finding it meditative, actually,” James said, stamping the masher about. “Look how the butter melts.”</p>
<p>Francis dumped in all the cream and sprinkled a bunch of salt in. James switched to a circular stir with a wooden spoon. Another slab of butter joined the party. Francis nudged in closer to James and picked up his white cheddar and cheese grater.</p>
<p>“Keep stirring,” he said, and began grating the cheese into the pot. James tilted his body and Francis slotted into place against him. James’s stirring arm made half an embrace; James was nearly spooning him like this. He was taller than Francis, his presence total and enveloping, and suddenly the height and breadth of him was all Francis could think about. His mouth went dry. He wanted to say something clever or sexy, but his mind turned up blank. He could feel James’s breath in his hair.</p>
<p>The potato mixture was growing thick and creamy and he waited to see it stretch like elastic with the addition of the cheese. </p>
<p>“Looks wonderful.” James’s voice was a rumble in his ear. It sent a frisson up Francis’s spine. Francis’s breath left him raggedly.</p>
<p>“I have to crush a bit of garlic up,” he murmured.</p>
<p>“Mm.”</p>
<p>James reached around Francis with his free hand and picked up a clove of garlic. Francis set his cheese and grater down and took it from him.</p>
<p>“I, ah, need the garlic press too.”</p>
<p>James groped for the garlic press and handed it over.</p>
<p>“Ta,” Francis said. He pressed the garlic and tapped it into the potatoes as James stirred. James handed him another clove, and Francis repeated the process. </p>
<p>James was all around him, giving off heat, but had not pressed against him. Francis felt as though his nerves were electrified. Moving carefully so as not to break the moment, Francis added a little more butter, a little more cream. James leaned over him and took a deep breath.</p>
<p>“That smells divine,” he said, and Francis’s body tightened at the vibration of his voice.</p>
<p>“Almost there,” Francis murmured. He leaned over to get the chopped chives and dumped them into the pot. James stirred them through, cheery little pops of green.</p>
<p>Francis closed his hand around James’s on the wooden spoon. James let it go and Francis lifted it, half turning to present James with a taste over his shoulder. </p>
<p>“Careful,” Francis said. James met his eyes as he blew a stream of air over the potatoes. He took a taste and Francis withdrew the spoon. James’s moan was nearly obscene.</p>
<p>“Christ, Francis,” he said. “These are nearly enough to make me believe in God.”</p>
<p>“You like?”</p>
<p>“Of course I bloody <i>like</i>, Francis, these are—Jesus, what <i>is</i> that?”</p>
<p>Francis snorted.</p>
<p>“You were right here when we made it,” he said. “You got me the ingredients!”</p>
<p>James seized the spoon from him and took another bite, and another. His face was a mask of bliss. He held up the spoon for Francis to try. Francis held his gaze as James guided the mound of potatoes into his mouth.</p>
<p>It was creamy and rich, full of flavor and texture. He could barely taste it for the look on James’s face. He hummed. James licked his lips.</p>
<p>“I could eat this whole pot,” he said, voice husky.</p>
<p>“Have as much as you want,” Francis said. James swallowed and stepped back, handing over the wooden spoon. Francis felt he might topple without James to prop him up. </p>
<p>“Could I use your…”</p>
<p>“Oh!” Francis waved a hand vaguely. “It’s actually through my bedroom, if you just…”</p>
<p>James nodded earnestly.</p>
<p>“I’ll just…”</p>
<p>“Yeah.”</p>
<p>James left the kitchen and disappeared from sight. Francis turned back to the potatoes. He shook himself. </p>
<p>“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “Fucking <i>potatoes</i>.” </p>
<p>He found the pot’s matching lid and covered them. He put away the ingredients they hadn’t used, set the masher and the garlic press and the wooden spoon in the sink, dumped the skins and the leftover chivey bits in the rubbish bin, wiped the counters down. He rinsed the stuff in the sink and set it to the side to be washed properly later, when he didn’t have a guest and sudden dinner plans. He glanced at the time.</p>
<p>Christ, how long had James been in the loo?</p>
<p>Francis dithered some more, looking in the fridge at his rainbow carrots and chicken thighs. He might not actually want dinner for a couple of hours yet, so no point in starting them right now. He wandered the tiny kitchen. He went into the living room and collected the tea service. He chewed his nails and ran his hand through his hair.</p>
<p>What if James had fallen? What if he was ill? What if he needed an ambulance?</p>
<p>Francis drew himself up, took a fortifying breath, and marched through the living room and down the corridor and burst into his bedroom ready to batter down the door to the en suite if he had to. </p>
<p>Instead he found James lounging in his bed reading a book, wearing nothing but a black lace bodice that extended over his hips and attached to his garters and stockings. James looked up and Francis’s heart stumbled. He froze in the doorway.</p>
<p>“Good lord, Francis,” said James. “I thought I might die of old age.”</p>
<p>Francis caught himself gaping and snapped his mouth shut.</p>
<p>“Well,” he said with a little cough. “You might have mentioned.”</p>
<p>James smiled and turned so he lay on his side across the bed, facing Francis. His prick was soft and tan on his thigh. Francis’s breath came heavier. He moved toward the bed but halted at the foot to take in the sight. The…<i>thing</i> James wore had no structure to it, was just a gauzy bit of lace that hugged his body. He watched Francis with half-lidded eyes, lips wet and parted.</p>
<p>“I figured you’d have seen through my very clever remote access ruse.”</p>
<p>Francis wet his lips.</p>
<p>“Were you wearing this when…”</p>
<p>James nodded. </p>
<p>“I thought you’d noticed,” he said.</p>
<p>Francis swallowed, shaking his head. James chewed on the corner of his mouth, languid body suddenly tensing. Francis made short work of the buttons on his shirt and shucked it, then pulled his t-shirt over his head. James’s tongue flickered over his lip as his gaze trailed down Francis’s body. Francis lost the belt and dropped his trousers. He kicked them off and then eased his smalls over the hardening column of his prick. He clambered onto the bed and knelt before James, who closed the book and set it aside. He tipped his chin up as if defiant before a firing squad. In his gaze was a challenge.</p>
<p>Francis reached out, pushed gentle fingers through James’s rumpled hair. James shuddered under his hand, breath coming heavy. Francis traced the sharp line of his jaw down his neck and across the graceful clavicle, and then over the lean muscle of his arms, over the fine bones of his hand and the angle of his hip, clad in lace. Francis wanted to trace the crease of his thigh, wanted to bury his face in the neat thatch of hair where James’s cock was nestled, lengthening. Wanted to suck him, drink him in, draw the pleasure from him until he was empty and Francis’s belly was full of him. Francis stopped short of James’s cock.</p>
<p>“May I?” he asked. </p>
<p>James’s Adam’s apple bobbed. </p>
<p>“I don’t,” he said. “But you can.”</p>
<p>Francis drew his hand back and leaned in to set his nose against James’s neck. He breathed him in—a dark, warm scent, clean and intoxicating. He sucked a shape into his pulse point, and James’s moan rumbled through Francis’s body. James sank back, and Francis moved with him, stretching himself over the long lines of James’s body, chest to chest, stomach to stomach. He sucked the juncture of neck and shoulder, the space behind an ear. James’s legs fell open to him like a cradle, and he wound his arms around him, pushed his fingers into Francis’s hair.</p>
<p>Francis trailed his lips up James’s neck and over his jaw until he paused before his panting mouth, nose nudging nose. James made a low, desperate sound, and then Francis sealed his lips over his. James’s lips were thin but soft, and they opened to him hot and hungry. Their tongues touched, timidly at first, but Francis growled and pressed his advantage, swept deeper inside. James moaned and lifted his legs up, thrust himself into Francis’s hardness. </p>
<p>Francis felt a thrill at the knot of James’s cock against his own, and he wanted it badly in his hand, in his mouth, but he couldn’t force himself to leave off kissing him, long draws heavy with desire, breathless and dizzying. </p>
<p><i>I’ve wanted this</i>, Francis thought. <i>Wanted to devour him just like this, every time I saw him</i>. He needed to savor it now. Tonight felt like a moment out of time, out of their regular life. </p>
<p>A hand landed on Francis’s arse and pressed him closer. James’s hips tilted up and he nearly mewled. Francis took pity on him and broke away. He dragged his lips down James’s body, pausing to bite and suck at his nipples through the lace. He nuzzled James’s chest and belly, and when he reached his cock it was flushed red and straining, leaving trails of slick on the lace.</p>
<p>Francis set his nose in the patch of hair beside it and breathed deeply of the musk and sweat. James moaned helplessly above him and lifted his hips. Francis opened wide and pushed his mouth over James’s cock, gave it a hard suck. James shouted, both hands sinking into Francis’s hair. Francis growled and set himself to his task, bobbing over James’s prick, drooling and sucking with abandon. James tasted so good. Clean skin and salt sea and his own personal musk. He fit into Francis’s mouth just so, the head of his cock slotting against the roof of his mouth, where Francis could use the back of his tongue to push a rhythm against his slit, his frenulum. James thrashed a bit beneath him, and then pushed his head down and away.</p>
<p>“It’s too much,” he panted, “it’s too much.”</p>
<p>Francis hummed but lowered his head to lick at James’s hole, which earned him a grunt that was most certainly not bordering a squeal, which would be embarrassing. </p>
<p>“Tell me when you’re gonna come,” Francis said. “I want to swallow your load.”</p>
<p>“<i>Francis!</i>’</p>
<p>Francis slid his hands under James’s arse and tipped it up to his face. He lashed and sucked James’s hole until he was writhing against him, until it gave way to his tongue. Francis pushed deeper and deeper. </p>
<p>He lay down on his back and pushed James up. James crawled over him, knees bracketing Francis’s shoulders. Francis held his hips steady and drew his tongue over his hole. James made a sound like a low roar and sat up, grinding down into Francis’s face. Francis let his eyes roll back in bliss. He squeezed and petted James’s arse cheeks as he licked around his hole. He surrendered to the all-encompassing rapture of it—the heat, the smell, the taste, the way James squirmed above him making the most intoxicating sounds.  </p>
<p>The pressure eased and suddenly James was belly to belly with him, hands directing Francis’s cock into his mouth. Francis muffled a shout into James’s crease, and then slapped his arse when he took Francis deep, sucking him hard. Stars burst behind Francis’s eyelids. They undulated together in a tangle of heat and spit, tongues and lips. James’s cavernous mouth was wet and welcoming. Francis gave himself over to the push and pull of it, punctuated with slaps to James’s arse. He could feel James’s cock leaking copiously against his own chest. </p>
<p>Francis lost track of how long it went on, but finally James rose up again, panting, and swung his leg over Francis’s face to get off him.</p>
<p>“Enough now,” he said, breath heaving. He flopped back, spreading his legs wide in invitation. “Need to come.”</p>
<p>Francis scrambled to get his mouth over James’s prick. James hissed and thrashed, and Francis gentled his tongue, his suction. He slowed his bobbing, softened his lips.  </p>
<p>“Fingers, Francis,” James gasped, “finger me, finger me, come on, Francis—”</p>
<p>James’s arse was loose and greedy. Two fingers were sucked inside without resistance, and Francis fucked him mercilessly, drilling his prostate with unerring accuracy. He pushed his head further and further down, until James’s cock brushed the back of his throat. He suppressed his gag reflex, eyes leaking, mouth drooling. James’s hands were convulsive in his hair, his body clenched and unclenching around him, his breath coming choked and strangled.</p>
<p>Francis rocked and twisted his fingers inside him. He pistoned in and out until his arm burned, but he didn’t stop. He added another finger and James howled. He curled his fingers and jammed them hard against James’s prostate. James seized up and quivered like a violin string pulled taut, and then he was pumping come into Francis’s mouth, down his throat. Francis grunted and gentled his fingers, stilled his working mouth, swallowing, swallowing, so fucking happy to swallow. James clasped his head, breath hitching, until he collapsed, boneless, beneath him. Francis kept sucking gently until nothing more could be wrung from James’s prick. He pulled his fingers out and James whimpered, legs falling open. </p>
<p>James tapped his head and Francis left off his cock, heaving in a breath. He buried his face in James’s pubic hair and got his knees under him so he could grab his own cock. He began jerking himself, hard and swift, but James was saying something, James wanted—</p>
<p>“Get in me to come,” he said, tone urgent, “don’t come ’til you’re in me, Francis.”</p>
<p>“I—I’m almost—”</p>
<p>“Just get it in me, Francis, now, now!”</p>
<p>Francis lurched up and pressed his cock into James’s slack hole. James shuddered and moaned, hooking his knees in his hands. Francis gaped at him and sank deeper. He watched the flutter of his eyelashes.</p>
<p>“Fuck, Francis,” James moaned. “I don’t want you to come anywhere but in me. I want it all in me, all of it, always, not a drop wasted.”</p>
<p>With a cry, Francis’s climax broke over him. He jerked and drove hard into James’s body, emptying himself completely. His vision failed him, his strength failed him. He sank down onto James’s body and knew nothing more for long minutes. Nothing but the humidity of the air, the smell of James’s sweat and come, the harshness of his own breath. The hands soothing over his back. </p>
<p>Francis slid off James and turned his neck to look at him blearily. His lacy thing was askew, his hair sticking up, his eyeliner smudged across his temple, his cheekbone. He shone with sweat. He was fucking stunning. </p>
<p>“Why are you…” The words dried up on his tongue. He could hardly ask what he saw in Francis, could he? Lest speaking of it break the moment, the entire spell of their unexpected compatibility shattered.  </p>
<p>James lolled his head around to meet Francis’s eye.</p>
<p>“Hm?”</p>
<p>Francis cleared his throat. </p>
<p>“Your make up’s smeared,” he said.</p>
<p>James lifted a hand and rubbed at his eye. Francis laughed.</p>
<p>“Well that’s hardly going to improve things.”</p>
<p>“You like it?”</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Francis said. James blinked at him, a smile threatening to steal over his lips. He sat up and scrubbed a hand through his hair before he bent over the edge of the bed to rummage around in whatever he had there. This resulted in a bold view of his bare arse, from which slipped a trickle of come and spit. Francis was tempted to follow his slavering tongue straight inside, but James sat back up with a little bag in his hand, and leaned over to turn the bedside light on.</p>
<p>“Here,” he said, handing Francis the bag. “Fix me up.”</p>
<p>Francis unzipped the bag and found a few brushes, a dark brown pencil, a black tube of who knows what, and a compact of four shadows in shades of copper and brown. Francis huffed out a laugh, shaking his head.</p>
<p>“I’ve no idea how,” he said. “You’d probably lose an eye.”</p>
<p>“Let me do you then,” James said. Francis looked up and saw his eyes sparkling over a curly smile. He swallowed.</p>
<p>“All right.”</p>
<p>Surprise lifted James’s brows.</p>
<p>“Really?”</p>
<p>Francis set the bag in his lap.</p>
<p>“Before I lose my nerve, yes.”</p>
<p>James clapped once in delight and plucked the brushes from the bag. </p>
<p>“Oh, I wish I had something better for your coloring,” he said, fussing over the shadows.</p>
<p>“Ah yes,” Francis said. “Fishbelly.”</p>
<p>James slanted an unimpressed look at him. </p>
<p>“Porcelain,” he said primly. “Cream. Buttermilk.”</p>
<p>“Lord.”</p>
<p>“Hush. Close your eyes.”</p>
<p>Francis complied. He tried not to flinch when the brush puffed over his eyelids. James was close enough to him that he could feel his breath, the heat of him.</p>
<p>“You ever let Sophia do this to you?” James asked after he had swished over both eyes. “Or anyone.”</p>
<p>Francis grunted.</p>
<p>“Sophia was not inclined to wear anything more than lipstick and a bit of, what’s-it, mascara?”</p>
<p>“Yeah,” James murmured.</p>
<p>“She once told me my lashes are ‘too pale,’ but she didn’t come at me with anything to fix it, at any rate.”</p>
<p>“They don’t need to be fixed,” James said, voice low. He was still brushing over Francis’s eyelids. </p>
<p>“Sometimes her lipstick would get on me,” Francis said.</p>
<p>“Oh?”</p>
<p>“It tasted funny but the color was nice,” he said. “I thought, what a shame.”</p>
<p>“What shame?”</p>
<p>“That I couldn’t splash a bit of color on and go about my business without everyone making a fuss.”</p>
<p>Francis felt the pad of a thumb ghost over his lips.</p>
<p>“Wouldn’t that be just the thing,” James murmured.</p>
<p>Francis felt him lean back, fingertips on his jaw turning him into the light as if for inspection. </p>
<p>“Open your eyes,” he said. </p>
<p>Francis opened his eyes. James’s smile was soft, small. </p>
<p>“Lovely,” he said. “A bit of liner now, are you ready?”</p>
<p>Francis licked his lips, closed his eyes. James steadied his head with one hand and leaned over him. He felt the touch of the pencil on the corner of one eye. He held his breath as James dragged the pencil along on both his upper lid and his lower. He pulled back.</p>
<p>“Open,” he said. </p>
<p>Francis obeyed. James chewed his lip, but nodded.</p>
<p>“Ready for the other eye?”</p>
<p>Francis closed his eyes, and James repeated the process. When he opened them again, James stared at him for a long while, eyes large, lips parted.</p>
<p>He set the pencil down. He cupped Francis’s face. He kissed him. Gentle, close-mouthed, slow. Francis, hungry and lustful, opened his mouth, and then James’s tongue swept inside, hot and searching.</p>
<p>James’s stomach rumbled. </p>
<p>Francis sat back with a laugh.</p>
<p>“Dinner?” he said. James’s eyes crinkled into half moons, nearly closed, as he smiled.</p>
<p>“I was promised chicken and <i>rainbow carrots</i>,” he said. </p>
<p>“As long as you do your part on those damned potatoes,” Francis said. James laughed, pressed close again. Muffled his laugh in Francis’s mouth.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Washing up in the bathroom before dinner, Francis caught sight of himself in the mirror. His eyes looked defined, wider. He leaned in to inspect himself. He didn’t know what James was talking about with the colors—Francis liked the effect. Subtle. Barely there, but resulting nonetheless in a more striking version of himself. He could probably go out in public like this. </p>
<p>He did not want to go out in public. He wanted to make James dinner and feed him sexy potatoes and find any pretense to touch him. He wanted James to spurt Francis’s own come out onto his chest so he could scoop it up and suck it down and pump him full again. </p>
<p>Francis washed his hands and his mouth more vigorously. The sooner dinner was over and done with, the sooner dessert would arrive.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Their plates were clean and their feet—Francis’s bare, James’s yet in stockings—tangled together under the table. Francis had his elbows on the table, chin in palm, as he listened to James talk, his hands fluttering about like graceful birds.</p>
<p>“…so I really do think the uniforms are complete shit, I mean, <i>polyester</i>? Oh, take me back to epaulettes and bicorne hats, then I could really cut a fine figure.”</p>
<p>“Those hats are awful and I’m glad I was never alive to wear one.”</p>
<p>James laughed and clapped.</p>
<p>“Oh, but I think I’d have liked that,” he said. </p>
<p>“It would look ridiculous even on you!” Francis said, running his foot up James’s stocking. James planted his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands before beaming at him.</p>
<p>“Imagine, Francis—you and me on some 19th century warship, fucking our way across the world and back. I’d never let you take it off!”</p>
<p>“I don’t think it would feel good stuffed in your arse, James.”</p>
<p>James howled with laughter and Francis chuckled just hearing it, seeing it: his head thrown back, his eyes squeezed shut, a hand on his chest and his teeth gleaming.</p>
<p>“Oh, God,” James sighed, wiping his eyes as the laughter subsided. “I admit I did get desperate on tour. I had this ball bearing…”</p>
<p>Francis leaned in, too eager—James burst into laughter when he caught his eye.</p>
<p>“Jesus, Francis,” he said. “You <i>are</i> an arse fiend, aren’t you?”</p>
<p>Francis nudged his foot.</p>
<p>“Look who’s talking,” he said. </p>
<p>James hooked an ankle behind Francis’s. </p>
<p>“I admit it readily,” he said. “While all the other boys discovered their pricks, I discovered my arse.” His mouth twisted in a rueful smile. “One clue among many, I suppose.”</p>
<p>Francis hummed, set his chin back in his hand.</p>
<p>“What did you use?” he asked. “Your fingers? Your toothbrush?”</p>
<p>James slanted a wicked grin at him.</p>
<p>“Would you believe me if I said the neighbor boy’s tongue?”</p>
<p>“Not for a moment.”</p>
<p>James laughed.</p>
<p>“Then you’d be right,” he said. “Fingers at first, but the angle’s shit. I started with these colored markers, and then I grew my hair long just so I could have a hairbrush. My—my mum was perplexed when I took so long picking one out.”</p>
<p>“Oh my God.”</p>
<p>James snickered.</p>
<p>“I know. I was a terrible little pervert.”</p>
<p>“How old were you?”</p>
<p>“Twelve, thirteen,” he said. “A bit of a late bloomer, I think. What about you?”</p>
<p>“When did I discover wanking?” Francis said with a laugh. “Same age, I suppose, maybe a bit earlier. Diddling your prick at all hours like a shithead is much less interesting than hearing about you and your needy little arsehole, though.”</p>
<p>“So when did you discover other people’s arseholes?” James asked, eyebrows raised, tongue firmly in his cheek.</p>
<p>Francis arched his own brow.</p>
<p>“If you’re asking when I lost my virginity…”</p>
<p>“Oh, I am,” James said. “I <i>definitely</i> am. Oh my God, Francis, is this you telling me you fucked an <i>arse</i> before you fucked anything else?”</p>
<p>Francis shrugged with mock modesty.</p>
<p>“You know,” he said. “Catholic girls.”</p>
<p>James made a scandalized face, eyes blazing with interest.</p>
<p>“Oh my God, tell me everything,” he said. “How many were there? Could any take that cock properly? Who were they, I’m insanely jealous!”</p>
<p>Francis’s face hurt from all the laughing. He shook his head.</p>
<p>“What kind of Casanova do you think I am?” he said. “I was only more gawky and ill-favored in looks when I was a teenager.”</p>
<p>“<i>Ill-favored?</i>”</p>
<p>“I had precisely one sweetheart, the last two years at school. Magdalena Lafferty, who much preferred my fingers in her arse than my prick, though she did let me get the head in when I needed to come.”</p>
<p>“Great Christ, Francis,” James said. “Keep talking like that and I’ll throw myself at you arse-first.”</p>
<p>“Oh, please do, James.” Francis toed up James’s leg and landed in his lap, where James clapped down upon his foot and held fast before it could harass his cock.</p>
<p>“No, go on. Did you ever get in her puss?”</p>
<p>Francis laughed and shook his head.</p>
<p>“I gave her head, but it was the ’80s in small town Northern Ireland,” he said. “No chance of buying a condom from a shopkeep who could recite your whole family tree back to the famine, and no way we were risking a baby, either. Jesus, the disaster that would have been. Everyone thought we would get married, but the truth was we were just a couple of queers who recognized ourselves in each other, I think.”</p>
<p>James let go of his foot and Francis drew it back.</p>
<p>“That sounds sweet, actually.”</p>
<p>“It was, I suppose,” he said. “Last I heard, she lives near Dublin, does something with horses. Been with the same woman for thirty years, or some such.”</p>
<p>James suddenly looked like he was about to burst, hands pressed to his chest.</p>
<p>“Oh, I love her,” he said. </p>
<p>Francis leaned in far enough that their knees touched under the table.</p>
<p>“Anyway, call it imprinting or what have you, but I never wanted anything as much as I wanted arse. That can be a problem with w— with anyone who wants their cunny fucked.”</p>
<p>“Are you opposed?” James asked. “To fucking cunny.”</p>
<p>Francis scrubbed a hand through his hair.</p>
<p>“I don’t know if <i>opposed</i> is the word,” he said. “It’s a perfectly nice <i>genital</i> with very interesting perks, I just don’t particularly want to stick my dick in it.”</p>
<p>Francis saw the calculation take place in the flicker of James’s eyes. Francis braced himself.</p>
<p>“Is that what went wrong with Sophia?” James said.</p>
<p>Francis chewed on his lip. What hadn’t gone wrong with Sophia? Francis dressed wrong and wasn’t from the right class of people and hadn’t gone to Oxbridge and would never own a plot of land with a stately manor house and a silly name. He had never been good enough for her or for Mr. and Mrs. Franklin, and he never would be—that was a delusion they’d both been slow to face. Oh, and he was a sodden drunk who had nearly pickled himself by the end. That the sex wasn’t up to par was barely an afterthought.</p>
<p>“Everything went wrong with Sophia,” he said. “She tolerated my having a go at her arse up to a certain point, but she more let it happen than she enjoyed it, and could never take it all, in her arse <i>or</i> her cunny.”</p>
<p>Incredulity passed into James’s expression, and then sly satisfaction. He wriggled a foot up Francis’s leg.</p>
<p>“Well,” he said. “Lucky, lucky me.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Thank you, <a href="https://kami-ships-it.tumblr.com/">Ludwig</a>, for this gorgeous art!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They passed the weekend eating and fucking, laughing and talking. On Sunday night, they kissed in the doorjamb for minutes on end before James finally tore himself away and staggered out the building. </p>
<p>On Monday morning, Francis bustled into the break room to get himself a cup of tea, and stopped short when he saw James waiting for the microwave to finish. James turned around and Francis watched his expression warble between “hello, polite coworker” and “oh shit” and “I remember what you put in my arse last night” and “be cool for fuck’s sake.” Francis was fairly sure his face was doing something similar.</p>
<p>“James,” he said, with dignity.</p>
<p>“Francis,” James said.</p>
<p>“Good weekend?”</p>
<p>“Very.”</p>
<p>“That sounds nice for you.”</p>
<p>James’s eyes glinted, and Francis detected the hint of a smirk gathering in the twist of his mouth.</p>
<p>“It was, thanks,” he said. “How about you?”</p>
<p>Francis’s blood was rushing southward. He swallowed.</p>
<p>“My weekend was quite diverting, thank you.”</p>
<p>“I see. A regular thing, do you think?”</p>
<p>“I hope so.”</p>
<p>The microwave beeped and James turned to open the door. Francis felt drawn toward him as if by some unseen hand. He came up close, and peered around James’s shoulder. James stilled.</p>
<p>“Breakfast?” Francis said. </p>
<p>“A bit of instant porridge,” James said. </p>
<p>“Smells lovely,” Francis said, turning his face toward James’s armpit.</p>
<p>“Francis—”</p>
<p>The door swung open and clattered against the spring door stop. Francis sprang away from James like a startled cat, only to find J.C. in the doorway, arms outstretched.</p>
<p>“Francis!” he said. “Christ, man, I thought you’d died! Are you all right? You can take time off, you know, no one will judge you.”</p>
<p>“Ah.” Francis cleared his throat. “I’m sorry I didn’t text you yesterday. I needed the rest.”</p>
<p>James slid off to the side with his bowl of porridge. In the periphery of Francis’s vision, he could see that James’s head was ducked low, the tips of his ears red. He opened the fridge door and grabbed something out.</p>
<p>“Pish, Francis.”</p>
<p>“Pish?”</p>
<p>“Pish to your apologies!” J.C. clapped both hands on Francis’s biceps and gave him a squeeze. “They’re not needed. You were sick, for God’s sake, though I do think the children will be calling in their IOUs for Uncle Frank’s special potatoes sooner rather than later.”</p>
<p>Francis bit his lip. James’s head snapped up. Francis gazed resolutely into J.C.’s dear, familiar, desperately unwanted face.</p>
<p>“I’m quite recovered, I assure you,” he said. “When’s good for the children?”</p>
<p>J.C. laughed and dropped his hands, only to slap Francis on the shoulder. </p>
<p>“I’ll ask Ann,” he said. His brow knit even as he smiled. He searched Francis’s face. “It’s good to see you, Francis. You look well. Really well.”</p>
<p>Francis’s answering smile was weak. Behind him, James fumbled some milk and swore under his breath. </p>
<p>J.C. left, and Francis glanced back at James. His lips were parted, his eyes wide. Someone else entered the break room and mumbled a greeting. Francis tore his gaze from James, nodded at the newcomer, who ended up being Henry Peglar, and fled from the break room without his tea, feeling James’s eyes on him all the while.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>By mutual agreement, they stopped fucking at work. It wouldn’t do to be so obvious, and if they kept on like they were, they’d be caught. Besides, it made the anticipation that much more delicious. So, they looked through each other in the hallways or among mixed company. They made a show of sniping at each other if conversation occurred at all. On the weekends, James came over with his messenger bag full to brimming with a complement of toys and outfits. They fucked against the door and over the counter and on the couch and in the shower. They kissed and held hands and James let Francis stuff his arse full of any passing thing that looked like fun. Francis recorded a video of him pushing all manner of items out, but he wasn’t to use it to get himself off when they were apart—his come was for James and his needy little arse alone. </p>
<p>Francis never wanted it to end. </p>
<p>Christmas approached without either of them mentioning to the other that he might be missed. Francis did the usual, which was to spend five days in Aylesford, Buckinghamshire, at the Ross country manor with J.C. and Ann and the children, as well as J.C.’s addled old war hero uncle. Of James’s plans, Francis knew nothing. A pang of regret passed through him—for what, Francis didn’t know. Surely James was busy with family and thought of Francis not at all.</p>
<p>Francis was morose enough to elicit J.C.’s concern until James texted him on the Christmas day: <i>what are you wearing?</i> He laughed and answered <i>naught but a sprig of holly</i>, and off they went again. J.C. razzed him for being silly as a schoolboy, and then vowed he’d find out the identity of “whoever makes you smile like that,” if only to buy them the nonalcoholic drink of their choice. Francis kept his phone close after that, and barely contained himself enough to keep from bouncing his knee. </p>
<p>Lucky for him, John Ross had as early a bedtime as the kids had, and Francis was able to beg exhaustion and bid his hosts goodnight.</p>
<p>In the guest room, Francis hung away his holiday best and pitched himself sideways into the bed.</p>
<p>“Facetime?” he texted.</p>
<p>The call came not a moment later. Francis’s grinned to see the screen filled with James’s smiling face, its stark lines and angles softened by the warm eyes, the soft, unkempt hair.</p>
<p>“Hi hi,” James said, waving.</p>
<p>Francis smiled, lip caught between his teeth.</p>
<p>“Hi James,” he said. </p>
<p>James was wearing a thin nightgown in black lace. Francis recognized his bedroom from previous calls. </p>
<p>“You didn’t go anywhere for the day?” Francis asked.</p>
<p>A smile quirked one side of James’s mouth and didn’t reach his eyes. His shoulder rose and fell in a matching shrug.</p>
<p>“I usually spend it with my foster brother,” he said, “but this year he took his girl to Majorca and he’s going to propose on New Year’s.”</p>
<p>“Oh.” <i>Foster brother?</i> “I…Christ, James, you should have told me.” </p>
<p>James’s smile was brittle, his shrug nearly compulsive. </p>
<p>“What’s to tell? I was never formally adopted. I don’t have parents, I don’t have a heritage, I don’t even know why I look like this.”</p>
<p>“That’s…” Francis felt discombobulated, as if all the world had been rendered foreign in this new light. “You look lovely—golden and healthy. But that’s not what I meant. I meant J.C. would have been overjoyed to have you over. His uncle’s got a million rooms in this old house, and J.C. loves to host. There are probably ghosts to hunt.”</p>
<p>James huffed out a laugh, lip caught between his teeth.</p>
<p>“Well, that’s embarrassing.”</p>
<p>Francis shook his head. James’s shoulders had rolled inward, the very picture of shame. What had he to be ashamed about? That despite what he had just revealed, he was strong and successful and brilliant? Francis wanted to dash his pain away with a stroke of his hand.</p>
<p>“I should have asked your plans,” Francis said.</p>
<p>He should have done any number of things. He should have asked if he was going to be with people who accepted him over the holidays. He should have made sure James had somewhere to go, full stop. He should have damn well got his own courage up and asked him to the manor. That he appeared to be spending the day alone in his own flat clawed at Francis’s heart; he shied away from the sure knowledge this was likely not the first time James had spent the day thus, and would not be the last.</p>
<p>James sighed and threw himself backwards into his bed.</p>
<p>“I want to be in Majorca,” he said. “I want to be in Mykonos, or Lisbon, or Bali or Marrakesh or bloody Rio. I used to go places in the Navy, and I thought I would with Expeditions, but instead I sit in an office poking risk assessments and waiting for the moment you look at me a certain way.”</p>
<p>“Oh.” Francis frowned. “Why don’t you go on any of the voyages? If you want warm, there’s always the ones to the South Pacific.” </p>
<p>James pulled a face.</p>
<p>“John won’t let me,” he said. “Says I’m needed in the office and can’t be spared.”</p>
<p>Francis frowned. Going on one voyage a year was a benefit for all full-time staff that weren’t explicitly employed as sailors, and, depending on need and inclination, they could go on up to three if they worked two of them. </p>
<p>“That’s not right,” Francis said. “Have you checked your contract?”</p>
<p>“My contract means fuck-all when the man in charge is a stubborn mule who thinks he knows best for everyone.”</p>
<p>Jesus. Before all this, Francis had thought James Mr. Franklin’s preening little pet. Now he didn’t know what to think, but that the man kept him close for no reason Francis could discern. Where once he would have accused James of happily licking Franklin’s boots, now he wasn’t so sure James liked him at all. </p>
<p>“We’ll figure it out,” Francis said. “Maybe…maybe you can come on one of mine.”</p>
<p>James’s eyes were dark under a troubled brow, but he smiled nonetheless.</p>
<p>“I’d like that, Francis.”<br/> <br/> </p>
<p>After the holidays, Mr. Franklin was increasingly agitated about this voyage and that, this amenity or the other, various routes and menus and schedules and activities that had been decided long ago and needed no rehashing. Francis was so frazzled by his sudden micromanaging that he began to daydream about quitting in some shocking public spectacle and starting his own company—poaching not only the best and brightest of Expeditions Unlimited but their ships, their client list, their funding. He would be president and make Silna head of operations, and both of them could captain as many of the voyages as they wished. James would be given some underlings so the office could spare him. </p>
<p>In lieu of acting out that fantasy, Francis and James began to devise an argument for James to join Francis on the Falklands/South Georgia trip in two months. They had already scheduled the meeting in which they would present it to him. They even had a PowerPoint. </p>
<p>Of course, that’s when Mr. Franklin went and had a stroke.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The lads in IT gave Francis access to Mr. Franklin’s files for his use while he was Interim President. They were a mess, of course—nothing labeled in any recognizable organizational system, folder names seemingly random rather than by voyage and year. His desk was worse—computer and monitor and at least half the desk itself covered in so many post-its as to create the appearance of feathers, the whole thing a hefty bird liable to wing away at any moment.</p>
<p>But, tucked in the sunny corner of his corner office, was a beaten up file cabinet probably as old as James was. The first week, for at least an hour over the course of a day, Francis stood before it, arms crossed, staring in contemplation. </p>
<p>J.C. caught him at it on Friday and poked him in the ribs and out of his trance.</p>
<p>“What are you doing, Francis?” he asked.</p>
<p>Francis swung a hand out and jabbed at the thing with his finger.</p>
<p>“That <i>thing</i>, my good man, is full of the old man’s secrets. I bet everything’s nicely filed and properly labeled and perfectly fucking cogent <i>in there</i>, an arsenal in his ongoing war against joining the 21st century.”</p>
<p>“So, where’s the key?”</p>
<p>Francis turned to face him. He pulled a face that said “who fucking knows!” and spread out his hands. </p>
<p>“I’ve asked Mr. Hoar, I’ve asked Mr. Bridgens, I’ve asked the lady who delivers the water once a week. I’ve tried to jimmy it open with YouTube tutorials, but the damn thing’s built to withstand a nuclear blast from Russia.”</p>
<p>“Have you asked the man himself?”</p>
<p>Francis heaved a deep sigh. He had visited Mr. Franklin in hospital the day after his stroke. He had been diminished so suddenly—a big man made small and pale in a hospital bed, eyes leaking tears as if without his knowledge. One side of his face immobile. Everything inside Francis sank at the sight of him. He had patted the man’s hand and spoken of inconsequential things—the puffins and the cliffs and the accents in the Hebrides during the only expedition they had been on together, nearly ten years ago now. He could not bring himself to ask about the file cabinet, the digital organization system, the hundreds of post-it notes.</p>
<p>“He’s not well, J.C. We have to brace for him not to return at all.”</p>
<p>J.C. exhaled. He tapped the file cabinet with the toe of his shoe. </p>
<p>“Gonna have to ask Herself, then.”</p>
<p>Jane Franklin. Jane Franklin who knew everything her husband knew, and could most likely run the company better than he could dream. Jane Franklin who had told him she’d never welcome him into her family. Jane Franklin who made Francis want to pitch himself headfirst off said Hebridean cliffs.</p>
<p>“I don’t suppose you’d do it for me,” Francis said, quirking a brow.</p>
<p>J.C. cracked a grin at him, slapped him heartily on the shoulder.  </p>
<p>“Francis, Francis, Francis,” he said, picking up the phone receiver and shoving it at him. “This is what having an assistant is for.” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>James came home with him that night, clambered atop him and took him into his body, soaked him up with his hands and his mouth. Francis surrendered, helpless but to worship beneath him like a zealot. He wanted to remember every muscle and plane and soft curve, every gasp and moan and flutter of lashes. When James came, untouched prick pulsing over Francis’s chest and belly, Francis rubbed the semen into his skin, licked his fingers, savored the bitter salty slick of it on his tongue.   </p>
<p>After, Francis half-drowsed, running his hand over James’s arm and chest and hip. He toyed idly with a tiny pebbled nipple.</p>
<p>“Are you still thinking of going to the Falklands?” James asked. </p>
<p>Francis turned his face into James’s chest, a grumpy sound emanating from him. He got his lips around a nipple. James carded a hand through his hair.</p>
<p>“I think I need to stay and oversee the transition for a few months at least,” he said, muffled. “I need to organize all his shit and streamline it, maybe switch over systems entirely. This is what Expeditions has needed for years, but I always thought…”</p>
<p>“There’d be warning,” James said. “A transition period.” </p>
<p>Francis nodded. </p>
<p>“On the upside,” he said, “maybe I can go on the Northwest Passage voyage this year after all.”</p>
<p>“Mm.”</p>
<p>He nuzzled into James’s chest, sucked on a nipple. James sighed over him.</p>
<p>“I’d like a little pair of tits,” he said, voice dreamy.</p>
<p>“Eh?”</p>
<p>“Wouldn’t it be nice? Just a couple of soft little puffs for you to lay your head on.”</p>
<p>Francis nuzzled the flat planes of James’s chest, grazed the nipple with his teeth.</p>
<p>“These are enough to be getting on with,” he said. He heard, felt James swallow, and tensed. “Unless you really want,” he said hastily. “They’d be lovely. You’d be lovely.”</p>
<p>James hummed out a laugh.</p>
<p>“At ease, Francis,” he said. “I’m not starting an entire <i>process</i> of hormones just to get some tits. It’s nice to think of, is all.”</p>
<p>Francis <i>would</i> like a little pair of tits, was the thing. But he also felt drunk on James’s body as it was. He loved its angles and its hardness. Loved the broadness of his shoulders paired with the slender sturdiness of his hips. Tits wouldn’t be <i>better</i>, they would just be another pleasing thing. A pair of cherries atop an already indulgent sundae.</p>
<p>Francis brought his hand up to cup James’s pec, squeezed it into some semblance of a curve. He sucked and bit at the nipple until James moaned and threw a leg over Francis’s hip.</p>
<p>There was a plug inside him, stopping up all the come. Francis pushed it aside but didn’t take it out. He fucked his way inside again and James bellowed into the pillows. Francis locked his arms around him, held him tight.</p>
<p>“You’re perfect,” Francis panted into his ear. “Perfect, perfect, just as you are.” </p>
<p>Shuffling James off home every Sunday night, sleeping and waking alone on Monday morning, entering the office and having to pretend he wasn’t a feast for his eyes and his heart, was starting to wear on Francis.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Francis entered the office Monday to find Thomas wringing his hands and James standing behind him with a pinched face Francis couldn’t read. Francis stepped out of the elevator and paused, glancing between them.</p>
<p>“What,” he said.</p>
<p>“It’s Miss Cracroft, sir,” Thomas said in a rush. “She’s in Mr. Franklin’s office.”</p>
<p>Francis flattened his lips.</p>
<p>“I’m a big boy, Thomas, I can bear to see the ex.” </p>
<p>He made his way down the hall, pointedly not looking in James’s direction.</p>
<p>He saw her through the glass walls before she saw him. She was standing at the window, hands clasped behind her back. Once, Francis’s heart might have stuttered to see the fairy-like delicacy of her, the tininess that inspired a desire to hold her in hand, tuck her into a pocket, keep her safe.</p>
<p>An illusion, all of it. Now, Francis’s heart kept excellent time.</p>
<p>He slid the door open and she turned. She smiled at him and held up a pair of exceedingly small keys.</p>
<p>“Hello, Francis,” she said.</p>
<p>“Sophia,” he replied. “You didn’t have to wait for me.”</p>
<p>She rolled her eyes.</p>
<p>“I wanted to see you, you git.”</p>
<p>“Well.” Francis straightened his jacket and stood up tall. “Now you’ve seen me.”</p>
<p>“You look well.”</p>
<p>Francis sighed and turned away from her. He took off his jacket and hung it up, set down his thermos and messenger bag.</p>
<p>“As do you, as always,” he said, feeling harassed. </p>
<p>“Francis.”</p>
<p>Francis forced himself to face her and didn’t bother curbing the scowl that troubled his face.</p>
<p>“Why do you always—look, I’m fine, this is fine, I just need in the file cabinet.” He held out his hand for the keys, but she drew them back. She winced.</p>
<p>“I have to tell you something.”</p>
<p>“What,” he bit out. In the periphery of his vision, he saw James loitering by Thomas’s desk. He ground his teeth together.</p>
<p>“First off, you have to know we didn’t know about this.”</p>
<p>Dread bloomed through Francis’s chest.</p>
<p>“Sophie. Just bloody say whatever it is.”</p>
<p>Guilt flashed across her face.</p>
<p>“He wasn’t making much sense, or it was hard to understand him, or something. But from what I can glean, he was expensing a lot of personal items. A lot.”</p>
<p>Francis reeled back. He was distantly aware that his mouth was hanging open but he could do no more about it than he could fly to the moon.</p>
<p>“Give me the keys,” he said. </p>
<p>Looking small and miserable, she handed them over. He turned the locks and yanked the drawers open. Sure enough: neat, alphabetized labels, squared away files, not a corner out of place, going all the way back to the inception of Expeditions Unlimited in 1999. Francis wouldn’t come on board til 2007, and Mr. Franklin himself wouldn’t be promoted to CEO until the elder Mr. Barrow’s retirement in 2015. </p>
<p>How long had he been at it? How many wages had been stolen from support staff, how much capitol siphoned from clients excited to see the far-flung corners of the earth? Three years? Five? <i>Twenty?</i> Francis dug through the files with increasing anxiety, blood rushing in his ears.</p>
<p>“Francis,” Sophia said, hovering at his shoulder.</p>
<p>“Just go, Sophia,” Francis said. “God, I have to call the cops. You know I hate the cops, Sophia!”</p>
<p>“Francis, please.”</p>
<p>He whipped around and held up some of the files to flap them at her. </p>
<p>“Sophia! John has committed a crime, do you understand? Many, many crimes, at the expense of his employees and his clientele, for God only knows how long! This is not something small companies recover from!”</p>
<p>“Francis, don’t call the police.”</p>
<p>“I know he’s your uncle, Sophie, I know what he’s done for you but can’t you see—”</p>
<p>“He’s <i>dying</i>, Francis,” she said, raising her voice over his. “He’ll be gone before the week’s out. Isn’t that enough?” </p>
<p>She reached for his hands, but Francis wrenched away from her. His heart threatened to beat clear out of his mouth. He clenched his jaw and forced himself to take and release two measured breaths.</p>
<p>“Someone doesn’t get away with this without help from accounting,” Francis said, low through clenched teeth. “I’m sorry this is a bad fucking <i>time<i> for you, Sophia, but no, I cannot let this pass, and you bloody well know it.”</i></i></p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>He slammed the drawers shut and locked them. He hurried Sophia out the door and locked that too. He stepped up to Thomas’s desk, where Thomas and James sat stock still, backs straight. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Thomas,” he said urgently, ignoring James’s wide eyes. “Call security. No one is to leave this building, are we clear? And do <i>not</i> let on that anything’s amiss before the police arrive.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Yes sir,” Thomas said with grim determination, receiver already in hand. Francis resolved to give him a raise, if Expeditions Unlimited was even still standing after this. He finally ventured a glance at James, whose brow looked like thunder as he chewed on his lip. A fathomless look passed between them, but Francis could only swallow and wheel away. He had to call the police.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis slammed James up against the stall as soon as he was through the bathroom door. The office had been crawling with police all day, interviewing each employee as their own IT lads, or cyber crimes unit, or whatever they were, combed through the computers in accounting. Finally, well after quitting time, one Cornelius Hickey was led away in handcuffs, and the rest of them were free to go. Francis, nearly bald from pulling out his hair, caught James’s eye and jerked his head minutely toward the bathroom for nervous shitters. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>They didn’t speak. They didn’t kiss. Francis tore James’s trousers down and his smalls along with them, garters snapping away from his stockings. Francis spat in his hand and pushed rough fingers into James’s clenching hole. He pinned him to the stall with a hand clasped on the back of his neck and shoved his cock inside him without ceremony. James cried out and quavered, but pushed his arse back because he was a filthy fucking slut for Francis’s enormous cock, and Francis told him so as he slammed back inside over and over.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“You can’t bear to be without it, can you, you fuck, you need it to fill your whore hole all the time, nothing else will do, fucking <i>say it!</i>”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Yes!” James wailed. “I need your cock, Francis, I’m a fucking whore for it, Francis, fuck me, fill me, make me feel it, make it so I never forget, Francis, Francis, fuck! Me!”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis drove into him at a savage pace, raw hole stretched wide and red around the girth of him. Francis shoved his hand through James’s hair and gripped it tight, ground his face into the stall.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Only me,” Francis growled into his ear. “Tell me there’s only me, tell me no one else will do.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“God, Francis! There’s only you! My arse belongs to you! Fucking destroy it, Francis, <i>fuck</i>, I’m gonna feel this for weeks, gonna leak you for <i>weeks</i>, Francis, I’m—I’m! Yours! Fuck!”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>James cried out and convulsed around him, arse spasming as he thrashed and then sagged against the stall. Behind them the door clattered against the wall and there was a gasp. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis swore and pulled out abruptly. James cried out, but Francis stuffed his cock back into his trousers and whipped around. It was Thomas, eyes as wide as saucers and nearly electric in the violence of his flush. He dashed back out and slammed the door behind him. Francis swore and fumbled with his belt. James turned around and sat himself against the stall, panting.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Why didn’t you fucking lock the door?” Francis snapped. “I have to go.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Francis, wait.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“I have to get him before he—”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“You really think <i>Thomas</i> is going to tell anyone?” James’s laugh was brittle. “He worships the ground you walk on. Stay with me a minute, Francis.” </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis turned the tap on high and scrubbed his hands under the flow with more vigor than necessary.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“It’s been an emotional day,” Francis said, losing patience. “He might not be thinking clearly.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>He turned the tap off and shook the water from his hands. In the mirror, he saw James wince as he stood. He took ginger steps toward Francis and reached his hands out.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“What does it matter if anyone knows, anyway?” James said. “Aren’t you tired of all this sneaking around? Don’t you just want to—”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis flinched away from him. He raked his hands through his hair and sneered as he stepped toward the door.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Today was a complete clusterfuck, if you hadn’t noticed, <i>James</i>, and this is one more fire I have to be the one to put out! So just—clean yourself up and I’ll see you tomorrow, for fuck’s sake.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis yanked the door open.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“<i>Clean myself up!</i>” </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis paused in the doorway and looked at James slantwise. James’s eyes were blazing, his color high. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“<i>You</i> tore my stockings and ripped the buttons off my shirt getting me ready for you, <i>you</i> bloody well rammed into me <i>dry</i> trying to get your rocks off, <i>you</i> mashed my face into the wall, and <i>you</i> can goddamn well keep me company while I make sure I’m not fucking <i>bleeding</i> from your dick in my arse!”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis felt like a volcano, ready to blow.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Oh, fuck <i>off</i>, like you didn’t love every gagging second of it, you bloody beggar!”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>James was panting, red, his clothes and hair askew. His lip curled in contempt.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“If you leave before I’ve tended to the arse you just tore up, Francis, don’t go thinking I’ll ever let you back in.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis held his gaze for a moment, mouth pinched. If he opened it, the volcano churning inside him would erupt. He walked through the door and let it slam shut behind him. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis found Thomas cleaning the counter in the break room. He crossed his arms over his chest and rolled his shoulders inward as he watched him frantically scrub down a whole bunch of nothing. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Thomas,” he said. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Almost done, sir,” Thomas said.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Thomas, I owe you an explanation.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“It’s fine, sir, I understand.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Thomas, could you please look at me.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Thomas paused, half bent over the counter. He visibly braced himself to turn around and face Francis. When he did, he tipped his chin up and did a very good impression of someone who might be slapped at any moment.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“What you saw—I don’t want you thinking any less of…anyone you might have seen.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“I don’t, sir!”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“It was just a couple of friends blowing off steam,” Francis said, and for a moment he believed it. “Besides, it’s over now. It was inappropriate and will never happen again. I’d appreciate it if you’d put it out of your head.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Thomas knit his brows. His mouth opened, but he snapped it shut again, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Francis sighed.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Speak freely, Thomas.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“With respect, sir,” he said. “You and Mr. Fitzjames have never been friends.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>He dropped the soiled paper towels in the garbage and brushed past Francis on his way out of the break room.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Don’t worry about me, Mr. Crozier,” he said. “You know I’ve got a mouth like a steel trap.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>With that, Francis was left alone in the break room. He sat at the table and buried his face in his hands.</i>
  </i>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Francis spent the next weeks holed up in Mr. Franklin’s office, fielding calls from the police, the media, and irate clients. Any extra time he had was spent combing through Franklin’s files to find where he’d inflated costs and frozen wages. Francis authorized the marketing department to hire a PR firm, and they were working on a statement about Expeditions Unlimited’s continued commitment to customer service as they worked on lowering prices and offering deals. Everything was a whirlwind, but it seemed, for now, that the company wouldn’t fold, and with some reconfiguring their services might even expand to be accessible to a wider range of clientele. In all of this, Francis didn’t see James once. </p>
<p>John Franklin died on a Friday. The funeral was a week later, a small affair, but Francis kept working even as he gave the rest of the office the afternoon off to attend.</p>
<p>At home that night he felt empty and restive. Tom Blanky was home from a couple of back to back voyages, but needed time to unwind before coming over for footie and fake beers. J.C. invited him out to dinner with some of his mates from his weekend rugby league, but Francis wasn’t feeling up to socializing with people he didn’t know. </p>
<p>J.C. cast a pitying look at him. </p>
<p>“Don’t think I don’t know when you’re in pain, Francis,” he said. “You were so happy, but lately you’ve been…” </p>
<p>Francis heard what he couldn’t say. <i>Like you were after Sophia</i>.</p>
<p>“It’s nothing,” Francis said, waving a hand. “You know how work’s been.”</p>
<p>J.C. only shook his head, squeezed his shoulder.</p>
<p>He was in a mood to wallow and grumble and possibly have a wank. He turned his telly on and flicked through every channel. Nothing looked good. He tried on four different books in various genres, but it was as if he were seeing through the words rather than absorbing them. He poked the internet, but news was all bad. What was new, really? He logged in to Facebook, his biannual slap in the face.</p>
<p>His niece Orla had got married last Saturday.</p>
<p>He slammed his laptop shut. </p>
<p>No one had even bothered to tell him. No invite, no heads up, not even his own shitheaded brother Michael dropping him a line, angling to get his daughter some lavish gift from her old queer Uncle Moneybags in London. </p>
<p>God, Francis wanted a drink. He recited the serenity prayer instead—as good as going to one of the stuffed up AA meetings that talked about God as if Francis hadn’t had God shoved down his throat all his miserable formative years, sometimes literally. As if God weren’t half his bloody problem. He stalked into the kitchen and threw open his fridge. There was a Club Apple he could drink, pretend it was a cider.</p>
<p>He was two years, ten months, and four days sober. The Club Apple was crisp and sweet, cheery in his mouth. There was a twenty-five year old baby picture of one of his nephews, Brandon, on the fridge. He yanked it off and ripped it up and threw it out the window.</p>
<p>He sagged against the range. He wanted to obliterate this feeling, all his thoughts. If James were here—</p>
<p>He shook himself and returned to the couch. He’d find some really vile porn to blow his mind out his cock and never have to think again. He closed the Facebook tab with prejudice and opened a new window. His finger hovered over the P key for a moment before his other hand took over and hit the F and E keys.</p>
<p>Fetlife popped up.</p>
<p>He hadn’t checked in several months—since he and James first began fucking around. There were messages dating back from before Christmas, which he vaguely recalled deleting from his email. Twinks and goth girls and a handful of people his age, looking for a big prick to plug them up. He scrolled until he got to the messages labelled AmorPhous. </p>
<p>He hovered his mouse over the name. The profile picture popped up. It was new since the last time he’d looked, which made something dark and ugly wind its way around Francis’s lungs. So much for <i>only yours</i>. Viciously Francis clicked on James’s profile, feeling in a rather self-punishing mood. </p>
<p>Maybe there would be something Francis could piece together, some clue as to who was filling James up now. It was a torture, imagining James stretched by another, moaning and writhing beneath someone else’s weight. Whoever it was, they surely couldn’t get it right. They surely didn’t touch him the way he needed, didn’t tell him the things he needed to hear, didn’t cherish every filthy moment of it. Whoever it was, he wasn’t worthy.</p>
<p><i>And you are?</i> came the serpentine voice of his conscience.</p>
<p>Francis scoffed and clicked on the new picture. He squinted and leaned in, disbelieving. </p>
<p>James was on his knees in bed, face tucked into what looked like a genuine vintage t-shirt that said RELAX in block letters across the chest. Francis belted out a laugh. He leaned in to inspect the photo further. James’s prick was caged, and protruding from his arse was an empty bottle of Fanta. Francis let out a triumphant whoop. He was so giddy he laughed at nothing.</p>
<p>Finally, Francis sat back as if exhausted. He passed a hand over his face and set his computer aside. He got up and paced around. He went to the bedroom and opened up his closet to look at a chunky, inexpertly knit grey and blue scarf James had left months ago. He fondled its fringe.</p>
<p>“It’s an affront to the eyes, I know,” James had said with a self-conscious shrug when Francis had asked about it. “But it’s so <i>soft</i>, Francis, touch it.” Francis had touched it, and James had smiled at him. “Someone I love made it for me, a long time ago.”</p>
<p>He should have returned it. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to in all these weeks. He swept it off its hook now and wound it around his neck. He had just enough brains to grab his wallet and keys before he was out the door. </p>
<p>He texted J.C. on the way.</p>
<p>“Going to get my sweetheart back.”</p>
<p>J.C. called him immediately, but Francis ducked into a tube station and lost the signal.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>James lived in a nice neighborhood just twenty minutes away by tube. The door was painted cornflower blue and had a brushed silver knocker at eye level. Francis took the stoop steps two at a time, and had hardly landed on the doorstep before he struck the knocker. He rocked back on his heels and forced himself not to bounce up and down like a child. </p>
<p>The door swung open and Francis’s heart lodged itself in his throat, only to drop when he saw Henry Le Vesconte standing before him.</p>
<p>“Oh hallo, Francis,” he said, arranging himself languidly in the jamb. </p>
<p>“Henry…” Francis shook his head, feeling harried. “I’m sorry, I must have the wrong address.”</p>
<p>“D’you wanna come in?” he asked.</p>
<p>“I—erm, thank you, but I’m actually—” Francis coughed and backed down the stairs, hanging on the wrought iron hand rail. Henry’s mouth tilted up in a wry sort of smile, full of too much knowing.</p>
<p>“James is my flatmate,” he said. “He didn’t mention it?”</p>
<p>“Oh.” <i>Christ</i>. “No, he—it didn’t come up.” </p>
<p>They had been a society of two for a bit there, happily ensconced in their bubble—hardly anything about their real lives had come up. Francis had been too comfortable there, he realized. So comfortable he hadn’t noticed James chafing at the constraints of it.</p>
<p>Henry unwound enough to push off the doorjamb and give Francis room to come in. He jerked his head toward the flat in invitation.</p>
<p>“Come on then,” he said. “He’s moping in the kitchen.”</p>
<p>Francis trailed behind him, suddenly unsure of what to say, or what to do with his hands.</p>
<p>“Company, Jas,” Henry said as they entered the kitchen. James was frowning over a book at the table. He was wearing glasses. He looked up and Francis was certain he would be able to hear Francis’s thunderous heartbeat, the rush of his blood through his veins.</p>
<p>James’s face pinched into a scowl.</p>
<p>“What do you want,” he said.</p>
<p>Francis flexed his hands, mouth dry, and then unwound the scarf from his neck.</p>
<p>“You left this,” he said, and held it out. Henry sauntered about the kitchen, taking out a bowl and a spoon and opening the fridge. Francis glanced at him. Was he really going to putter about as if Francis were on the verge of whipping out a bunch of expense reports and asking for his expertise?</p>
<p>James snatched the scarf away from him, shaking him from his reverie. Henry poured cereal into the bowl.</p>
<p>“You can go now,” James said.</p>
<p>“James, I’d like to—”</p>
<p>“What explanation could there possibly be, Francis?” James demanded. He stood up and jabbed a finger into Francis’s shoulder. “If I were Sophia, if I were any woman, I wouldn’t be the dirty fucking secret you leave half-naked on a grimy bathroom floor, now would I?”</p>
<p>Henry dipped out of the kitchen at last, and Francis stood up straight to look James in the eye. He looked like a storm.</p>
<p>“I’ve no excuses,” Francis said. “I was a shit who should never have…<i>used</i> you for my convenience and discarded you when there was trouble. I would cite the chaos of the day in question, but I believe I was treating you poorly the whole time, wasn’t I?”</p>
<p>James’s anger bled into a troubled sadness that battered Francis’s heart. James twisted up his lip and tucked a corner between his teeth to chew on. His fist was convulsive in the scarf. Francis wanted to reach out with both hands, wanted to draw him into his arms. He shoved his hands into his pockets.</p>
<p>“<i>Why</i>, Francis?” James said, voice low and emphatic.</p>
<p>Francis shook his head.</p>
<p>“Self-delusion,” he said. “Self-sabotage. Self-protection. Whatever it was, it was very selfish, and inconsiderate, and unkind. I think I thought I could pretend it was, whatever, some internet hook up with no bearing on my real life. But I wanted you all the time, James. I wanted you at work and I missed you every night you didn’t come home with me and our weekends together were like glimpses of a heaven that would be spoiled if the realities of my life encroached upon it. I don’t know what I thought was happening but that I loved it, and wanted it to last forever.” Francis scoffed at himself, lip curling in contempt. “Call it a disconnect between my brain and my heart.”</p>
<p>“And your penis.”</p>
<p>“That, too.”</p>
<p>“It was <i>humiliating</i>, Francis.”</p>
<p>Francis flushed. He was reminded, quite forcibly, of the Hard Nos on James’s profile.</p>
<p>“I never meant to,” he said. “I’m not—it wasn’t right.”</p>
<p>James crossed his arms over his chest and rolled those broad shoulders inward. </p>
<p>“Well. If that’s all…” he said, gaze cast somewhere beyond Francis.</p>
<p>“I’m sorry, James,” Francis said. “It’s not all because I haven’t apologized yet, so I’m sorry. I’m sorry for how I treated you, I’m sorry for how I must have made you feel, I’m sorry I’m—I’m sorry I’m a fucking coward.”</p>
<p>James looked up.</p>
<p>“You admit it, then,” he said. “You hid because it was me.”</p>
<p>Francis pressed his lips together, forcing himself to exhale slowly.</p>
<p>“I have to say something that might be hard to hear,” he said. </p>
<p>James waved a hand impatiently.</p>
<p>“I didn’t like you in the least ’til I got to know you,” Francis said. </p>
<p>James burst into laughter, limned at the edges with bitterness. </p>
<p>“Christ, Francis, you didn’t have to tell me that!”</p>
<p>Francis shifted his weight from foot to foot and huffed.</p>
<p>“My <i>point</i>, James, is that the website, and the…you know—”</p>
<p>“My God, Francis, the things we’ve done to each other, and you’re blushing like an altar boy,” James said. “Just say sex, for fuck’s sake.”</p>
<p>“All right, the <i>sex</i>,” Francis said, throwing his hands up. “After all the <i>steaming hot sex</i> and <i>shockingly vulnerable intimacies of conversation</i>, I found I liked you very much, so fucking much, James, and I—rationally or not, I worried that in the light of day you would go back to being the…the thorn in my side, the scab I couldn’t stop picking, the tooth loose in its socket.”</p>
<p>James stared at him, narrowed eyes unreadable, chewing on the inside of his cheek. </p>
<p>“And now?”</p>
<p>“Now I’d press you into the glass wall and eat you out while everyone in the office held up points like it was the rimming Olympics if I thought you’d let me.”</p>
<p>James’s eyes crinkled—the incessant chewing wasn’t enough to suppress a smile. Francis felt himself go warm, low down.</p>
<p>“What do you want, Francis?” James said softly. “If you could have this interaction go exactly as you wished, what would that look like?”</p>
<p>Francis gathered all his bravery and reached a hand out. He slid it over James’s jaw to cradle the back of his head. He stepped in close.</p>
<p>“I would kiss you,” he said, “and you would like that. I would ask you if you were willing to try again with me, cad though I am, without pretense, without sneaking, and you would say yes. I would have your forgiveness, and the chance to start again.”</p>
<p>The tip of James’s tongue darted out to wet his lips.</p>
<p>“I shouldn’t,” he said. “I should have some modicum of respect for myself.”</p>
<p>Francis drew his thumb over the high, elegant crest of James’s cheekbone. </p>
<p>“But,” Francis murmured.</p>
<p>“Call it a disconnect between my brain and my heart,” he said, and ducked down to press his lips to Francis’s. </p>
<p>Francis cradled James’s face in both hands. He opened his mouth to the heat of the kiss, the sweep of James’s tongue. James’s hands tangled in his hair and they were suddenly flush against each other and James teetered back. He budged up against the edge of the table and leaned back against it, pulling Francis’s head down with him. His face smelled good, his mouth tasted familiar, and all of Francis’s nerves were singing.</p>
<p>James opened his legs wide and Francis slotted into the space between them, and suddenly they were strewn across the table like discarded take-away. The book thunked down on the floor, along with something heavy that rolled away. James’s hand tightened in Francis’s hair and he bucked involuntarily against him.</p>
<p>Francis tore away, panting. James looked dazed beneath him, mouth swollen, glasses askew.</p>
<p>“I somehow doubt Le Vesconte would appreciate our having an ecstatic reunion on his kitchen table.”</p>
<p>“Excuse me, it’s my kitchen table,” James said. “I’ll have you know he showed up here with naught but a stack of milk crates full of hair products and silk sheets.”</p>
<p>Francis laughed. He slid off of James, and the table, and sat himself in the chair. He pulled James into his lap, and James wound his arms around his neck. Francis looked up at him with his heart in his mouth.</p>
<p>“How about this,” Francis said. “We make sure we’re not liable to poke anyone’s eye out, and I take you on a proper date. Dinner— wherever you like.”</p>
<p>“It’s Friday night in London, Francis,” James said.</p>
<p>“Ah.”</p>
<p>James tucked his lip behind his teeth and grinned.</p>
<p>“Let’s pop round to Tesco’s and have a picnic in St. James’s Park.”</p>
<p>Francis stroked down James’s sides and hips, savoring. He nodded.</p>
<p>“That’s the best idea I’ve ever heard,” he said. He leaned in and pitching his voice low. “Maybe you can wear a skirt with your Relax shirt and I can finger you on a bench as everyone and their aunt walks by.”</p>
<p>James sat back abruptly. </p>
<p>“You saw that?”</p>
<p>“It was for me, wasn’t it?”</p>
<p>“Of course it was for you! But the damn site said you hadn’t signed in for months and I was despairing.”</p>
<p>“You could have just texted it to me,” Francis said. </p>
<p>James scoffed.</p>
<p>“When, while you were pretending not to see me in the halls? When you were scrambling to save Expeditions from financial ruin? Oh, maybe during Mr. Franklin’s funeral.”</p>
<p>“Yes,” Francis said, locking James in the circle of his arms. “Yes, yes, three times a day ’til I got my head out of my arse and came running to beg your forgiveness.”</p>
<p>James brushed the hair back from Francis’s forehead and cupped his face.</p>
<p>“Let’s get some satsumas at Tesco,” he said, lips brushing Francis’s. “See how many we can stuff up me in the park.”</p>
<p>Francis ground his hardening prick up against James’s arse, but James slid off of him in one fluid motion, laughing, nearly prancing out the kitchen.</p>
<p>“I have to change,” he said, eyes sparkling. “And then you’re taking me on a date.”</p>
<p>Off he bounced towards his bedroom, looking like nothing so much as an excited rabbit. Francis laughed and felt like a flower, blooming.  </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Epilogue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Francis did so <i>enjoy</i> how James looked in his commander’s uniform. Enjoyed it even better when James struck a pose in Francis’s cabin door, sent him a saucy wink, and stalked over to his bed discarding items of clothing along the way. He stood at the foot of Francis’s bed with his hands on his hips wearing nothing but a captain’s hat atop his head, hip cocked, lips pursed.</p>
<p>“Very beguiling,” Francis said, “I am overcome by the seduction.”</p>
<p>James cracked a grin and slapped Francis’s foot where it dangled off the bed. Francis, already nude and propped up against the bulkhead, spread his legs and James slid into place between them. He plopped his soft prick onto Francis’s. Francis bit his lip to keep from giggling. James cupped his face and nuzzled his cheek. Francis breathed out, stroking down James’s back and over the downy curve of his arse.</p>
<p>“Missed you today,” James said, low. “Wished you were fucking me in front of the whole class.”</p>
<p>Francis growled, gripped roughly at James’s arse cheeks. The command team for these voyages were as much part of the entertainment as they were sailors and navigators—James led a biweekly Arctic wildlife drawing class among other things, and he and Francis were both forever rubbing elbows with the clients who wanted to hear tales of valor and hijinks, whether from their Navy days or from expeditions past. Francis admitted James was better at that part of it. It left little time for them to see each other during the day and early evening, when they would sit with clients at dinner and charm their way to five star ratings—also something James was better at.</p>
<p>Despite the tedium of schmoozing in the name of customer service, Francis was having a better time on a voyage than he had since he first joined Expeditions Unlimited. He was relaxed, and his smiles came easier and more frequently. He was nearly delirious with happiness, and he knew it was because of the sensual creature now overwhelming his lap and his senses. James had brought Francis back to life.</p>
<p>“It took everything in me not to rub my arse on the levers,” James was saying. Francis growled out a questioning sound and James laughed, breezy. “Are you not even listening to my filthy nothings, Francis? Woe, the thrill is gone.”</p>
<p>Francis surged up and caught James’s lips in a kiss. He hauled James’s arse cheeks apart and rubbed firmly over his hole. James cried out into Francis’s mouth. </p>
<p>“I,” Francis said, circling James’s hole, “have been thinking about filling you up with babies.”</p>
<p>James made a guttural lowing sound, his hips jerking gracelessly into Francis’s. Francis bit down gently on his lip.</p>
<p>“You’d like that, wouldn’t you,” Francis said, and James nodded frantically. “Getting big and round with my leavings.”</p>
<p>“Francis,” James gasped.</p>
<p>Francis flipped them over neatly and flung James’s legs wide. He nestled firmly into the cradle of Jame’s body and scraped his teeth across James’s nipple. He wet his fingers and returned to James’s clutching arsehole, harassing his way inside.</p>
<p>“These pretty little tits would grow,” Francis said, “get swollen and full and achey, and the only relief would be my mouth, sucking the milk out.” </p>
<p>James’s groan was a low vibration, and he squirmed under Francis’s ministrations. He bonked Francis in the head with a bottle of lube. Francis took it from him and moved lower, dragging his teeth down James’s chest and over his belly, where the hair thickened and led him unerringly to James’s straining cock. He gave it a squeeze but ducked lower to lave James’s arsehole with his tongue. James seized beneath him, and when Francis flicked his eyes up, he saw James had clasped a pillow over his own face to muffle the desperate sounds he made.</p>
<p>Francis settled in like a man before a feast. He would eat his fill. James thrashed and undulated and clasped Francis’s head between his thighs as Francis made a meal of his arsehole. When he was slack and grasping, Francis nudged his nose over James’s full, tight bollocks, followed the seam with his tongue, and then licked firmly up the length of James’s cock. James whimpered and rocked into his mouth.</p>
<p>Francis was liberal with the lube. He slipped three fingers inside and drummed against the smooth, clenching walls of James’s arse as he pushed his tongue slow and firm over James’s slit. He had become an expert at sucking James’s cock: not too long and not too vigorous, but slow and savoring, gentle on the suction. James liked it soft and maddening, and Francis had learned to love drawing out his patience this way, his desire like the crackle of electricity over a taut wire.  </p>
<p>James clasped the pillow on his face but dropped one hand to Francis’s hair and held him in place. Francis slurped around the stretch of his lips and jaw, worked the head of James’s cock between his tongue and his palate, curled and twisted the cluster of fingers in James’s arse.</p>
<p>James gave his hair a little yank before dropping his hand, lifting his knees, and groping for Francis’s wrist. He shoved down, pushing Francis’s fingers deeper inside, and a whimper broke from under the pillow. Francis tucked in a fourth finger and James thrust back into the penetration. James’s belly went hard and tight as he bore down, and then the entire flat of Francis’s hand slid into James’s hole. James screamed into the pillow and collapsed into the bed, panting.</p>
<p>Francis gentled his sucking, holding his cock in his mouth, stilling his hand. His thumb rested in the space between his balls and his arse. James groped for his hair and Francis turned into the touch.  </p>
<p>James dashed the pillow from his face and propped himself up on one elbow. Francis met his eyes over the planes of his body and quirked a brow. He watched James’s tongue flicker out to lick his lips. The hand left his hair and gripped his wrist again.</p>
<p>“Francis,” he said, breath heavy. “Francis, put your thumb in.”</p>
<p>Francis let James’s cock fall from his mouth. </p>
<p>“James…”</p>
<p>“Need you in me,” he said, “as far as you’ll go.”</p>
<p>He let go of Francis’s wrist and pulled his legs up, hands behind behind his knees. He held himself open. </p>
<p>Francis swore again but scrambled for the lube. He squirted a generous dollop on James’s hole, and then eased his hand out, only to rock back in slicked up and easy. James screwed his mouth shut to suppress his own screaming. Francis was slow and methodical, rolling the thick line of his knuckles against each wall of James’s arse to spread him wide. James was hot and sweating and nearly wrung dry by the time Francis tucked his thumb close and pushed the whole of his hand into James’s arse. A shout burst from behind James’s lips and he froze, arse rippling around Francis’s hand. His eyes were wide and wild, trained on Francis’s face, mouth hanging open. Francis gaped back at him, unable to tear his eyes from his, even to look at the way they were joined, the taut ring of James’s arse around his wrist. </p>
<p>Inside James felt impossibly tight and smooth, and he could feel the way James rippled and clenched around him. Francis moaned and resisted shoving his whole arm in, his whole body, but for a moment he imagined climbing inside and making them one single monstrous thing, replete in their togetherness.</p>
<p>“Gonna keep you like this,” he said. “Open and pinned, full of me.”</p>
<p>“<i>God</i>, Francis.”</p>
<p>“Gonna get you good and ready, mark you mine so everyone knows. Fuck a baby into you.”</p>
<p>“Yes, yes, fuck, put a baby in me, Francis, I want it, I want it, I—”</p>
<p>Francis slid the widest part of his hand out again, only to thrust it back in. James keened and threw his head back against the pillows, body seizing up. With his free hand, Francis squeezed his own prick in apology, but left off again to press James’s hip down.</p>
<p>“Are you ready, pretty?” Francis said.</p>
<p>“Oh, <i>God</i>, Francis, for what?”</p>
<p>Francis began rocking his hand in and out, slowly at first and then quicker and quicker until James was screaming continuously into a pillow, until his legs were shaking around Francis, until his eyes rolled back and his head lolled and his whole body quivered, clasped on Francis’s hand. </p>
<p>“Come on, love,” Francis said, “come on.”</p>
<p>James seized up and choked on air, gasping wordlessly, and hastily Francis closed his mouth over his prick. He pulled his hand out sharply and James shrieked, kicked him in the ribs, and came into his mouth. He came and came and didn’t stop; Francis swallowed it all away, slipped three fingers back inside to press against his prostate. James’s body twitched through the aftershocks even as Francis massaged more come out of him and drank it down like a thirsty drunk at Dionysus’ table.</p>
<p>James melted into a boneless mass. Francis removed his fingers to wipe on the sheet and James whimpered at the loss.</p>
<p>“Please, Francis,” he said.</p>
<p>“God,” Francis breathed, and thrust his prick inside. His arse was still spasming. James moaned, eyes fluttering, mouth slack.</p>
<p>“Want your baby, Francis,” he said.</p>
<p>Francis growled and leaned down to smell him. He hauled his hips up and fucked into him with hard, snapping thrusts. He was babbling, telling James how beautiful he’d be full of his baby, how big and round and lush, how he’d take care of him and feed him and fuck him to his heart’s content, how he’d never have to be empty again.<br/>  <br/>James stiffened and keened again, and then his arse clamped down hard and his body rippled and his prick plopped one more dollop of come into his belly. At the sight of it Francis gave a shout and lost his rhythm, jerking helplessly into James’s body. Stars cascaded behind his eyes and then he was soaring, blasting into oblivion. He emptied himself into James’s arse. When he finally collapsed, he slid onto his side and arranged himself behind James. His prick was still firm, and he eased it back into James, who moaned weakly but groped back for Francis’s hip, pulled him in tighter. </p>
<p>Francis stroked over Jame’s flat belly. He imagined it: soft and new, the sweet milky scent of something so fresh the world hadn’t spoilt it yet. James’s dark hair and Francis’s light eyes. A burnished complexion. A quirk in the chin. A smile that drove all darkness away. </p>
<p>Carefully, Francis pulled his cock out. He twisted around to rummage in a drawer for one of the long-stemmed plugs. He slipped it inside James, who grunted and twitched at the invasion.</p>
<p>“So it’ll take,” Francis said, patting his belly. Drowsy and not entirely returned to himself, James tilted one corner of his mouth up in half a smile. He linked their fingers together over his belly and held on.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>At 2am, Francis roused James, shoved two pillows under his arms, and ushered him out to the main deck. The late summer twilight had finally given way to a deep enough darkness that the stars could come out. They passed a few other couples, nodded their quiet greetings. Francis shook out one blanket to lie on and, when James stretched himself over it, shook out another on top of him and joined him beneath it. He shivered, and James tilted his body into his, warmed him with his own living heat. </p>
<p>The sky was deep blue and purple, and the stars splashed across it as far as the eye could see. Francis, a seasoned old sea dog who’d seen such things countless times before, was always dumbstruck by the sight of the stars, by the sheer number and beauty of them. Even now, when the midnight sun obscured so much, Francis was moved. They looked like a million pinpricks, and the light that shone from the other side was Heaven. </p>
<p>All was silent but for the lapping of the water against the ship, James’s breath in his ear. The gentle sway of the ship seemed to convey Francis up and into the swallowing sky, where the stars welcomed him. James’s heartbeat anchored him to this side of creation.</p>
<p>“There,” Francis said, pointing to the east. “Hercules and Lyra. Do you see?”</p>
<p>“Mmm. I’d like to come in winter, I think. See all of it, and the aurora too.”</p>
<p>Francis snorted, dropping his hand and sliding it back under the blanket. </p>
<p>“Die trying, more like,” he said. “Can you imagine? There’s a reason there are a zillion ships at the bottom of this ocean.”</p>
<p>“Racism.”</p>
<p>Francis laughed, turned his head. Mashed his lips against James’s cheek.</p>
<p>“Well, yes,” he said.</p>
<p>“We’d be smart about it,” James said. “We’d listen to our ice masters. We’d have a ship’s garden so full of tomatoes we’d never want one again. We’d dress like the Inuit. And if we got in a clinch, we’d take shelter with them, too.”</p>
<p>“You’ve thought of everything.”</p>
<p>“I’m very organized, Francis, and I’ve run all the risk simulations.”</p>
<p>Of course he had.</p>
<p>“How about this,” Francis said. “I’ll take you to Norway, or Finland. One of those places with the glass igloos in the woods. We’ll fuck under the Northern Lights for a week straight without the threat of impending death.” </p>
<p>Francis felt the way James’s smile spread across his face. He rolled his hips, and turned enough to draw his hand over James’s back and arse. The plug was still firmly ensconced, and Francis gave it a jiggle through the soft cotton of his sleep pants. James’s breath puffed hotly over Francis’s cheek. A gasp was the only sound he let pass from his lips.</p>
<p>Francis left off the plug and laid his hand on James’s cheek. He looked into his eyes. In them were a thousand million stars, daring to burn.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <b>End</b>
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